Skønheden og Udyret

[Cassidy Finch]

She jumped just slightly as she felt the subtle shift in the air that preceded his hands connecting with the counter, swallowing back a startled little yip in favor of a minute jolt of her shoulders. It kept her from elbowing him out of sheer surprise, a particularly dangerous thought paired with the fact she definitely had a knife in her hand. Sure, it was a blunt ended butter knife, but don't test her. Really though, she likely would have done more damage to herself. Instead she stayed rather still, her head slightly bowed and tipped to one side to offer him her ear and to expose the pale length of her throat.

"S'better with the sugar..." She mumbled through a soft exhale. A soft smile wrested control of the pursing of her mouth, tugging it up into a far more comfortable crescent than before. "You're welcome, Tralle."

Twisting a little, the awkward shuffle of her feet turned her around to face him. He was much, much closer than she had anticipated and so he got an up close and comically slow blink of wide eyes framed by a dusting of various flour streaks. She studied him from that intimate distance for just a handful of moments before pulling up her knife-wielding hand between them. "Um, they should be cool enough to cut into now..."

Like a good predator, he remained perfectly still as not to spook her and let her grow comfortable with her current surroundings. His blue eyes had adopted a moderate hue, his perpetual melancholy anger tempered by whatever he was stealing from these moments with her. His own gaze almost met hers, almost, a slight tip of his chin and shift of his gaze keep it from locking with hers completely. "I will get ice cream," he told her, but showed no immediate signs of moving.

Smart man, not moving. She had the knife after all. Ye who holds the butter knife, holds the power! Or at least that's what Cassie told herself. It made her feel better. He wasn't a "good" man by any stretch of the word, and the fact that she had been essentially cohabitating with someone scary enough to spook people by name alone, well, that wasn't the most reassuring thing ever. But hey, he had been gentle with her and she rationalized that if he wanted to hurt her, he would have done so by now. It reminded her of the little birds that hung out with the mean ass hippos in Africa. The hippos would wreck anyone's face but they let these little birds chill like it was nothing. Cassie was the little bird, most definitely.

"Y-you don't have to... you know. If you'd, um, rather stay here. Pie's still good without..."

"You went to all this trouble." Tralle touched her finally, the heavy pawing of a hand smoothing over the subtle swell of her hip, something born of their deepening familiarity but without overstepping. For all of his strong desire to keep her there and for all of his snarling anger, he had been gentle with her, in practice a little more than perception. "If it's what you want..."

"For pie, sure." She conceded, not so much as tensing under his touch as she might have in the weeks prior. Hinging on the minute but developing friendship, or whatever this odd arrangement was, she didn't shy away from the physicality in its innocence. He treated her like china, like he might break her with his touch, and while she had tried to go into to psychology of that on several nights where she couldn't sleep, she couldn't quite pin him down. "It's okay, really. You're back now, so hey, that's good. Um, you in for the night or do you have to go back out later?"

For a moment, his face lingered close to hers, almost inappropriate, before Tralle finally withdrew with a last gentle, fleeting touch. There was a shake of his head for her question. "I have nowhere else to be tonight. I am here for pie now if you want to cut us a piece."

It was his turn to show her his back the jacket shrugged out of and draped over the back of a chair, before he was scooping up the beer again and drinking deeply. Another step became another and then he was sagging into a lean against the sink, blue eyes steady on her again.

Her breath stilled, held tight in her chest for the few fleeting fractions of seconds that passed at such a scant distance between them. But just like that, he was pulling away and she sagged just slightly as she exhaled at last. Once she had room, she made quick work of getting back to the still warm pies to cut into them one by one.

"Cherry and apple, which do you want?" The answer for her was a bit of each, slivers of both set side by side on the same plate for their respective fruit fillings to ooze over the narrow sides of the crust to mingle in the middle.

"Cherry," he said, thought he was partial to apple. "Some of your cherry pie." The beer disappeared quickly and was discarded, his head still tilted to the side to hold her pinned beneath the weight of his regard. "Are you going to fall asleep reading again tonight?"

She had more than once and had left him to change her and put her to bed. These things happened sober too, don't know you.

Cassie pursed her lips and tugged them to one side, aiming a less than precise puff of air at a stray strand of dark brown. It fluttered upward then drifted right back down into her eyes. She huffed softly at it but pulled her utensils back to the cherry pie dish to cut him out a piece. Her serving was meticulous, paired with a little side to side sway and a quiet tune. "She's my cherry pie. Cool drink of water such a sweet surprise. Taste so good make a grown man cry, sweet cherry piiiiie."

Insert proverbial record scratch sound here. She blinked up at him owlishly. Stabbing a fork into the pie, she offered the plate over. "Huh what? I... ummmmmmm, hey, I'm getting better about that, you know. But I did find a book I'm pretty into, so I might try to finish it up tonight. If it bothers you, I can read in bed. No big deal."

She sang and he listened, small smile quirking on his lips when her back was turned and a dip of his gaze drinking in the subtle sway of her hips. He licked his lips and he let her keep going, not wanting to ruin the moment with her embarrassment.

"It, uh, doesn't bother me," Tralle replied, frowning. The moment, it seemed, was ruined. Even if only a little. "Was just makin' conversation and whatever. You like to fall asleep curled up in that old chair..."

His frown was mirrored with a delayed falling of her own smile. Not quite to the same depths as his but still pronounced. Dang, she had just started getting the smiles out of him too. Handing off his plate or at the very least setting it within his reach, she set a fork on her own and busied herself with cleaning up her mess. "Sorry, didn't mean to imply it did. I like the chair, it's comfy. Good for reading in when the fire's going. I'd bet if it starts raining, sitting there would knock me right out."

"It's getting warmer." He grumbled. "Won't need the fireplace soon. Maybe a last fire tonight ain't a bad idea." Picking up his place, he let the act of stuffing food rapidly into his mouth silence him and give her some time to mull it over.

"Oh..." She sounded almost crestfallen about that. Running water tempered her disappointment or at least washed over the thrum in her throat as she cleaned up. How did it end up that flour got everywhere like it had? She didn't understand it. But it took a chunk of her attention and delayed her own pie consumption but once things were relatively back in place or at least soaking, she forked herself a mouthful of apple pie. "If that's what you think is best, go for it. It's your home, after all."

"It's not best. Or worst." Tralle shrugged and reached up to rub at the back of his neck, briefly considering another another piece of pie as he watched her at work. "If it will make you smile pretty, seems like somethin' worth doing."

So no, no pie yet. Instead he abandoned the kitchen completely, big hands gripping the rungs of the wooden ladder that lifted up into the small loft bedroom that he called home. It was time for a change of clothes.

[Cassidy Finch]

March 19th-A Birthday Excursion

The longer she gave the whisky and beer time to settle in her gut and work through her bloodstream, the more she felt its effects. They had left the Inn with a brawl brewing behind them and she had just barely stumbled out in time to avoid the swinging of bottles and inevitably fists. He was as surly as ever, his threat of making her walk back to the Row alone weighing heavily on her mind. Soon though, an alcohol laden slur won out and she cast a look up at him in profile, studying the hazy shadows that cut long angles over his hard features. "You not gonna talk to me the rest of the way back?"

It wasn't unlike Tralle to he silent for long stretches of time, speechless in a purely surly fashion that was usually broken by a growl or some very terse words that either stole Cassie's smile away or made her get surly right on back. The odds were even on any given occasion as to which it would be, but tonight's walk back towards the Row and Underbridge Manor's little guest cottage saw a much more reserved side of her would-be keeper. His expression was hard, dogged and pensive both, but soon Cassie's voice was cutting through the gloom and drawing a look her way.

"What do you want to talk about?"

"Dunno. Why we had to leave so fast and why you're such a grumpy ass when we're out in public?" They were numbers one and two on a long list that would likely be easily forgotten to a whisky soaked mind. Her gait was uneven, bumping her hip into his at random intervals, but for the most part she kept herself upright out of sheer determination. After her last foray into drinking, she was determined to have no repeats of that hellish night. Her hands tucked into the pockets of her zip up sweatshirt, the midnight blue looking dark enough to pass for black except when the lamplight caught it just right.

"I'm a grumpy ass all the time!" He snapped at her, growling low and snapping his gaze back towards path ahead. "And it's unladylike to cuss!" Tit for tat, both hands were stuffed into the pockets of his leather jacket, the light bump of her body against his allowed and uncommented on, but eventually one of his hands was freed to steady her with a touch to her slim back. "Important things to do. That's why we left."

Tralle fell silent again, smoothing his hand over the back of her hoodie, and then adding. "Place is closin' soon. Wanted to get there before it does."

Her shoulders jolted with the snap, her eyes widening and then narrowing in rapid order. She seemed conflicted on whether or not to cry or yell at him but when he pointed out her slip up, she clamped both hands over her mouth. Her words were lost to the smother, drowned by her slur and the weight of her hands on her mouth. "OhmygoshohmygoshIdidn'tmeantosaythatI'msorry. "

Dropping her hands a few moments later, the look of horror lingered as she squared her gaze toward the horizon to steady herself, pinned between that and the guiding hand. "What's important to do this late at night? I mean, what's open anyways other than the bars and the strip clubs. Ew, we're not going to one of those, right?"

Those wide honeyed amber eyes, the horror and the surprise; it was all enough to melt away the perpetual irritation to curve his mouth with a mild sliver of amusement. He didn't point it out. It was something perhaps saved for a better time and Tralle was quick to turn his face elsewhere so that she wouldn't see that there had almost been a smile. He muffled his words when he finally replied. "Cake shop."

"Cake?" She looked mildly intrigued, stutter stepping to catch back up with him. For a moment she could have sworn that was a glimmer of a smile but like the passing shadows cut by the moons playing tag behind the clouds, it was there and gone before she could tell for sure. Her teeth grated against her bottom lip and she leaned to bump him with her shoulder. Bump. Bump, bump. "What if I don't want cake?"

"Then you'll starve!" There was the Tralle that everyone knew and disliked, unfortunate anger bubbling up before he could contain it. Inwardly, he regretted it but it was such a terrible, difficult to control. His shoulders heaved with the frustration it caused and then bit his tongue hard enough to draw blood in an effort to keep himself silent. Big hands clenched and unclenched and her keeper hunched over ferally.

But there was bumping. All that bumping. Eventually he turned a look back down at her, a small apology glimmer through the grimacing scowl. He wouldn't say it, but maybe she'd see it.

Her breath hitched and she stumbled right over her feet. Catching herself with a hand to his arm, she hastily pulled away from immediate contact but lingered in an unsteady hover like maybe she wanted to touch him, to tell him it was okay and that she had only been kidding. But her bravery drained away and a quivering frown settled in its place. Both hands, splinted and unsplinted both, lifted to catch the edge of her hood to pull it up over her head. It shaded her face entirely save for the very tip of her nose but didn't make it any easier to pass it off when she swiped the back of her wrist across her eyes.

"Sorry.. I was just... nevermind. Sorry."

"Can't help it," he said quietly. Eventually. It took a while for him to find even the smallest comfort in talking again, his body still heaving as if he'd just run a marathon and his angry heart was about to burst from his chest like a beast itself and eat someone. By the time those three little words were found, the dim light of an Old Market bakery, open late to accommodate any number of late working members of the Watch (it didn't matter which world you went to, cops loved donuts), spilled a sickly pale light for him to leave her in. Cassie was abandoned before she could reply or seek a clarification, the door chiming during the open and close.

The minutes ticked by slowly, uncomfortably before he opened the door again and poked his head out. The words were softer. "Come and pick."

As they walked, Cassie had wrapped her arms around herself, holding herself together as best as she could. Left to her own thoughts while he worked toward calming himself down and while he offered something vaguely resembling an excuse, maybe? She wasn't sure really. Whatever it was, she wanted no further explanation. She just wanted to go home. With her teeth worrying at the inside of her lip, well under the dark of the hood, she sniffed back some when he disappeared inside. A glance over her shoulder had her considering how much of a head start she could get before he'd notice she was gone but before she knew it, he was coaxing her toward the warmth of the bakery. Tantalizing scents of chocolate and cinnamon were enough to weasel their way through her foggy mind and reluctantly she trudged toward the door.

"I don't need cake." She mumbled in passing, squeezing past him to step inside just the same.

Tralle's face fell. Not that it had far to go. But if it was possible for his frown to deepen any more, it did so, painting a sudden disappointment over all of the more typical irritation and frustration. His shoulders sagged and he fished his cigarettes free from a pocket, pushing one between his lips and lighting it to keep his mouth busy. He sagged against the nearby window sill and just stared at her, ignoring all of the delicious confections that surrounded them.

Once inside, she pushed her hood back so she could see and out of politeness for the shopkeeper. Her eyes were rimmed red but she would gladly pin that on the alcohol's influence rather than anything else. Affording a shaky smile for the one behind the counter, she walked the length of the bakery case, leaning down to get a better look at the offerings. Along the way, she tipped a less than stealthy look back to Tralle before returning to her perusal. Finally, she tapped two fingers against the glass, pointing out a cupcake topped in blue frosting and yellow sprinkles. "Dutch chocolate with buttercream? That one. Please. And thank you."

The look was caught, his own expression chagrined. It was enough to make him take a sudden interest in his shoes. When Cassie finally made her choice, it prompted him to push away from his lean and cross the vinyl tile floor to place the requisite cash atop the counter. A subtle gesture was made to for the woman behind the counter to double the order.

"And whatever else you want," he murmured to Cassie. "Birthday girl."

She brushed back an errant dark strand, tucking it over her ear and waving off a wisp of smoke that had come with Tralle's approach. At least she didn't admonish him for smoking inside. She figured it would only worsen his mood which in turn would have dire effects on her own. After all, it was already going downhill enough, she didn't want to add to it.

"Just this, thank you," she mumbled, dipping her chin toward her chest to keep her eyes away from his. While the woman behind the counter packaged up the cupcakes into neat little takeaway containers complete with matching ribbons and plastic forks, Cassie rocked back on her heels, tipping precariously before righting herself. "I just wanted you to be nice, you didn't have to do this."

"I'm tryin'." Tralle said the words with a heavy exhale, his mouth widened into a grimace and his hands both pushed back into his pockets as soon as he could finish his cigarette and flick it out the door. The words were honest, another apology that wasn't an apology, and a glimmer of insight for the intuitive. The anger. The snapping. It wasn't all him. "No room for it in the Row. You're different."

Closing the distance between them, long fingers encircled her arm just below the elbow. Usually the touch meant above the elbow and a pull in some direction or another. This time it was a tender squeeze. Or, as much of one as Tralle could manage.

"I know." She conceded on the breath of a soft sigh, her chin still dropped and her eyes grazing over the bakery case without actually taking any of the details in. He made it difficult to think. Or maybe it was the whisky. She wasn't sure. Even closer it was only worse than before. She stood stock still in his grasp save for the brief bracing where she expected to be redirected and sent into motion. When that didn't come she finally lifted a look up to him.

"Can we just... I don't know. Go somewhere else?" She felt a little awkward standing there like that with the baker behind the counter waiting for them to take their order and get out of her shop.

"We can go back to the cottage," he offered. "You can have a bath. I can bring some books down to you from the manor." It was quite the olive branch, extended with another light squeeze and a gesture with his unattended hand towards the door. When she began to move, he moved with her, pushing the door open with the shove of a hand and leading her back into the damp chill of the night. "Then you could read and eat your cake, and I won't bother you."

"More books?" She looked up at him, her brows rising. Cliche as it was, he was speaking her language with such an offering. Within the pages of a book, new or old, she could disappear for awhile and not have to worry about her problems. Some people had drugs. Cassie had stories. She offered a passably polite smile for the woman behind the counter before turning to follow after him. The addendum to his offer had her expression crashing once more. Fingers curling into the warmth of her sleeves, she stared at his back for a pair of moments before she caught up to him, dropping her gaze to her feet instead.

"I... that's... hnngh. Nevermind."

"What? I t-thought you'd like it." Tralle actually sighed.

"I'm not good at this. I s-suck at this." He wanted to smoke again but jammed his hands back into his pockets once more, head ducked low to level a direct stare ahead of them. Their path took them through Old Temple and down the winding path that brought them through the smaller market that led into the Row. His body remained close to hers, their arms occasionally brushing when the path became uneven. "I wanted to make you smile..."

"N-no! I do! I like more books!" She said quickly, angling her chin upwards in the event she might be able to catch his eye. Alas, there was none of that. He had fixed his gaze straight ahead and they would be to the Row soon so the rashly bold thought of ducking her way under his arm was tucked to the wayside, kept solely for fleeting fits of whimsy. Saved for a time when Cassie wasn't so Cassie. She didn't match his sigh, as much as she wanted to, but the falling notes in her tone may as well have been a sigh.

"That's not what I was trying to say. I...I...um...what I meant was," she sucked in a deep breath and finally spit it all out in a rapid slur of tumbled words that melded all together as they fell from her mouth. "I didn't want you to leave me alone, I was enjoying hanging out with you but if you don't wanna it's okay. I just, I just don't want to be alone on my birthday."

"I like having you near," he said almost immediately. The admission was punctuated by a sudden stutter in his step during an inopportune turn down the final street that would spill them through the massive ironbound gates of Underbridge Manor. They collided after a fashion, a slightly stumble that might have spilled her on wet cobblestone if he hadn't thrown an arm around her slender frame to steady them both.

"Uh." Tralle was suddenly struggling for words again. "Very near, apparently."

Inebriation and her own lacking grace would have most assuredly dumped her upon the ground with such unceremonious brilliance that it could have only been the collusion of the universe working against her. Instead she found herself within the protective loop of his arm, much like she had wished she'd been brave enough to try for on her own. Maybe the universe wasn't out to get her after all. Once she was no longer at risk of ending up a tangle of limbs and likely ruined cupcakes, she lifted a gently angled look to meet him.

"Then let me be near? Don't push me away?" She asked softly, lingering there for only a few beats before drawing back from his grasp in favor of the final stretch back to the cottage.

She found his blue eyes, far lighter than their usual dark sapphire, boring into hers for her gentle look up. Once again his mouth had compressed into a thin, pensive line, something like the prelude to an uncertain smile. There was something reassuring in it, the lingering look and a more sure stalk forward. "You c-c-can be as near as you want. You can--"

And that was when Tralle walked smack into the unopened side of the manor's gate.

The unintelligible gasp and lift of her hands wasn't enough to get him to stop in time and the sudden clang of person meeting metal rang out all around them, an echoing warble lingering even after the collision. Cassie winced and hurried over, her bottle lip held firm beneath the weight of her teeth as she got close enough to see what damage, if any, had occurred. Left hand reached for a touch at his elbow, gentle and tentative.

"That...was something I would do. Are you okay?"

To his credit, Cassie's keeper stayed on his feet. Blue eyes blinked repeatedly as his mind struggled to grasp the sheer idiocy of what had just occurred. The shock led to recognition, recognition to embarrassment. The embarrassment? It became anger. It bubbled up from deep within him so suddenly that his skin had turned as red as a fire truck. His first inclination was to unleash a terrible roar and then to tear the offending gate from its hinges and then fold it into oblivion.

Cassie got to him first.

She touched him and the anger melted away, an occurrence so sudden that it left him blinking again, before a look fell to the fragile porcelain perfection of her face and the concerned etched there. She didn't find it funny when someone else might have. Tralle relaxed almost instantly for the touch.

"I... yeah. I'm fine. Stupid gate." He leaned into her anyway, setting them in motion again and skirting around the monstrous door. "What I get for gettin' lost in your eyes..."

The man was proving to be sweet at the weirdest of time.

The anger was rising, radiating off of him in pulsing waves that were almost palpable in the thick air of an hour much too late for lingering in the Row. It was part of why she had been so cautious in the way she touched him. She had been the target of his sudden snaps on at least a handful of occasions and while none had ventured into the realm of physicality, she wondered if it was just a matter of time. But he calmed and she breathed a sigh of relief, stepping in close to set the flat of her palm against his arm. Cassie was no stranger to embarrassing moments like that. If anything it made him seem a little more human. As he drew her around the gate instead of into it, she swayed against his touch and promptly tripped when he offered her what was arguably the sweetest thing he had said to her in the short time they had known one another.

"Aw f***." The f-bomb spilled free before she could catch it but at the very least she caught herself. On him. Awkwardly. Doubly so when her brain caught up to her mouth and she slapped a hand over her mouth. "Oh s***. I mean. Crap. Ugh. You heard nothing, Tralle. Nothing, I tell you."

Whether it was instinct or just a quick mind overburdened with the sudden desire to touch her, he was quick to snake that arm back around her, cinching her just above the waist and keeping her pressed tight into his side to prevent any further possibility of her fall. She cursed again and he pretended to ignore it, just as she asked, for a short while. A rough and sudden cough disguised another sound, possibly the impossible notion that Tralle had chuckled. But what were the chances.

The cottage wasn't far from the gate, far closer than the looming depression that made up the manor itself and it wasn't long before he was opening its door and holding it for her. Cassie was pressed gently into the waiting warmth of the homey little den, with Tralle following behind. "Christopher," he told her suddenly, uncertain of why now, of all times, he chose to share that little nugget of information. "My first name is Christopher... or Chris. No one else uses it..."

Melding against his side, she could have easily let herself fade into the nearly boneless stumble that the dutch whisky wanted to dictate of her anyways. There was a certain amount of safety in his grasp, looped as it was around her. Something that could have been suffocation or salvation depending on the day and their respective moods. As the fog gave way to the little cottage, she was easily ushered over the threshold and offered the scintillating little tidbit out of the blue. She spun about face and looked up at him, the surprise easily etched in the lift of her brows and the puckered rounding of her mouth.

"Chris." She repeated, chewing on his name for a moment before biting back a smile. Cassie set their cupcakes aside and stepped back toward him, stopping almost toe to toe with him.

"Nobody really calls me Cassidy, I just get Cassie. But I like Christopher. And Chris." Lifting on her toes, her chin rose to as if to let her nuzzle her nose along the sharp plane of his jawline. "I like how it feels on my tongue. Can I use it?"

And then there she was, an pretty invader taking up way too much of his personal space where anyone else who knew him didn't even want to share the same room with him. Maybe Cassie was braver than he had given her credit for. Maybe the little bird just had Tralle's number. The truth itself, he would tell himself later, was somewhere lurking in the middle, hidden beneath a dragon's trove of doubt and worry. She smelled like a good many of his nights alone, like liquor and rain and the candles he kept lit when the artificial light bothered him. She smelled like she belonged there, like she was his.

"You can call me Chris if it makes you happy," he said finally, tipping his chin down and very nearly returning the physical gesture, their mouths dangerously close to repeating a drunk kiss from a different night. "When it's just us. No one else. Names have power. But you... y-y-you can have m-mine."

She said other words. Other words that needed a response. Just not a sweet one. "You could have other things on your tongue..." There was a feral shift, some small confidence in the moment restored.

Wide eyes were bright and doe-eyed, amber looking almost gold with the bare light of the cottage mixed with the thin slivers of silver moonlight that made it through the windows. Gone was the petulant pout she had worn most of the way home, hidden under the shade of her awning like hood. In its place was something more uncertain, more tentative. Liquid courage only went so far, she had found that out once already. But it was her birthday, which meant a whole new year to be everything she hadn't been the year before. Bold, brave, beautiful. Maybe all of it, if she could manage.

"I like it," she repeated, nodding softly. The gesture swayed her against him, the soft collision sending her barely rebounding backwards with a quietly punchy giggle and a scuff of her shoe. "But only when it's just us. Cross my heart."

[Cassidy Finch]

3/31

Not everything got to be warm sunny smiles from the Little Bird and the grudging but welcome solace of her little touches. The reality of life in the Row for some (or most) was a crushing weight that Tralle tried to spare her as often as he could, usually through growed threats she only took half seriously and threats she had come to find hollow, assuming much of the burden like Atlas with the world. He often assumed that the nights he had to spend away, deep inside the grounds or the manor, or deeper still within the bowels of the Row, were a time of enjoyment for her where she could be free of his surly stoicism and oppressive looming.

The night before, he hadn't come back to the cottage at all, and left her with only the heavy drumming of rain on the roof through the night. He returned sometime before the sun began its slow climb over the horizon, wet, miserable looking, and unapproachable. He had barely managed to strip out of the soaked clothing before dropping hard onto his bed, yanking the blankets over himself and promptly falling into a deep slumber. Well past noon he had remained there, snoring like some great, slumbering beast.

Daylight was her time to play and with him in bed, she ventured a quick escape through the Row and into the city proper. Most of the time she went straight to the library and back but with him down for the count for who knows how long, she took her time in her adventure. So when she came running back at breakneck speed sometime just before sundown, it was easy to assume that something had happened. The door shut roughly behind her but she didn't pause to try and catch her breath. Instead, she dumped her backpack and hurried for the ladder to the loft.

"Chris!" They were alone after all, she could use his first name. Her wrist was still splinted if only for a few more weeks, so her progress up the ladder was slow enough for her to slow her breathing. When she got to the top, she paused to eye him before sneaking toward his bedside to lean down toward him. She was much quieter the second time around. "Chris. Wake up."

When Tralle slept, he slept hard. Rousing him from a slumber often proved to be fruitless or frustrating, as Cassie had come to learn in the weeks of them growing closer. But then again, she had never banged anything around before or yelled either. It was the hard knock of the door within its frame that jolted him, not from the depths of his sleep but enough to turn her keeper restless in his reverie. The loud call of his name produced a rumbling growl, some hollow threat that would never come to fruition.

It wasn't until she called his name the second time that one eye cracked open slowly, gummy with sleep and a dull stormweather blue-gray. He grunted but showed no signs of moving.

"Wake up Sleeping Beauty, I wanna show you something." Amber eyes were wide with excitement and her cheeks were ruddy from the sprint back. Cassie was not the athletic sort, not in the least. Running was seldom done unless there was a good reason. Leaning down toward him, she beamed a brilliant smile that may as well have been the sun risen anew for all the shine it offered to him. "Pleeeeeeeeeease? It's getting dark but if you won't get up, I'll just go by myself. In the dark. Outside. In the dark. Did I mention the sun's almost down?"

"Hunh?" That one eye opened wider and for all of her sunshine, he scowled a loosed a quiet growl of protest at her. Of course, Cassie remained unaffected by the gesture and Tralle was eventually forced to give in and let his expression soften. It was a battle she was winning and eventually won when implanting him with the notion that she would venture into the Row at night without him. "Fine. Grrrph. Fiiiine."

He roused then, both eyes opening and his hands slipping beneath his frame to push him slowly upwards. A lean towards her caused their cheeks to brush gently and then he was trying to sit up. "Another book store?" Not that he minded but he did have a reputation to maintain.

As if it were even possible, her grin grew further when he finally agreed. For all of his grumpy and grousing, she knew just how to push his buttons in such a way that he would bend to her ever whimsical desires. Despite the night they had spent together on her birthday, she still felt her cheeks flush in the wake of the brief contact with his. It had her slowly leaning back out of his personal space. The day found her in a heavy hoodie over top of a flared skirt that hit a few inches above the over the knee socks that disappeared into her Chucks. Tucking her chin beneath the sweatshirt's collar, she wiggled her mouth beneath the fabric to mask her smile.

"No. Even better. C'mon!" Even muffled by thickly layered cotton, the mirth was easily heard in her tone, her smile reaching all the way into a crinkling at the corners of her eyes as she backed away from him and climbed the ladder back down. "And don't go back to sleep!"

"Grrrph. Okay, I said okay!" He snapped, but the bark was infinitely worse that the bite. Another shift on the bed saw him pushed up to his feet, swaying momentarily as he got his bearings and then focused back on her with a lighter hued stare. Standing before her, he wore nothing but a loose fitting pair of boxer-briefs. "You win this time. Gotta change."

He leaned into her for a moment before passing, as if even that brief touching as enough to energize him into further action. Back to her, he began to rummage through a dresser and pull free clean clothes, dressing silently while she practically vibrated with excitement. Jeans, boots, and an old drab brown t-shirt which was covered by that favored leather jacket of his. "Ready."

"Don't get snippy with me, Mister." She giggled as she faded back out of his space, doing her best to avoid looking at him in his boxers. Sure she had seen all of that before but she also didn't want those thoughts in her head at the moment. Once she made it to the ground level, she paced circles as she waited, impatient in her desire to show him whatever it was she was going to show him. When he fiiiiiiiinally touched down too, she grinned and grabbed for his hand, dragging him toward the door less than gently.

"We gotta hurry and get there before the sun goes down all the way. Oh my gosh." Somehow still breathless, the words came out in a whoosh, all rambling girlishness and excited joy. The hurried pace and the grasp of her hand had them clearing the manor's gate quickly and she resisted the urge to break into a full on run, at least until they made it out of the Row. Cassie had turned them north, leading them straight toward the rushing river that separated the north side of town from the south and it didn't look like their course was going to divert. When they reached the water line, she took a hard right, a building giggle catching in her lungs as the foliage filled in over head. The setting sun trickled bare bits of light through the clouds and rose tinted blossoms on the trees that lined the river, the cherry trees in full bloom for only a short time before the pretty pink flowers faded in favor of green. Their pace slowed and finally she came to a stop beneath the thickest stretch of canopy. Her hand let his go and she looked up at him, her grin pulling hard enough at her lips that it made her cheeks hurt. Intermittent gusts of wind stripped handfuls of petals from the trees and let them flutter to ground like velveteen snow which only seemed to delight her further.

"Isn't it beautiful?"

Even with the slow failing of the light, there were still plenty of curious eyes to follow their progress, more than one brow raised in morbid curiosity as the near infamous Tralle allowed some slip of a girl to haul him through the streets. More interested in her excitement and the insistent pull of her hand, he ignored everything else save for the occasional glance to a darkened alley mouth. Habits. The closer they became to their final destination, the more he began to take note of her surroundings. There was an incentive in it, with glances stolen towards her deepening smile, nearly infectious enough to force one upon him. His mouth twitched, his eyes a much lighter blue.

And then they were there, a stoic lean against a nearby wall more his style, affording him the panoramic view of the beautiful shedding trees and the petite woman so entranced by them. In a weak moment, Tralle eventually did smile. "More so because you're here too."

"Have you ever been to DC when the cherry trees are in bloom? This might be even better than that..." Excitement translating to breathless wonder, her hands turned palms up to try and catch the dancing petals in the wind. Save for one or two, they all escaped her grasp but not her laughter which carried on the breeze before being lost to the emptiness that was the north side of Old Temple just before sundown. They were outside of the Row's prying eyes, beyond the abject grittiness. It may as well have been a different world for Cassie. Finally she turned back toward him, intent on taking his hands to drag him into the midst of falling petals.

"Hardly, but that's sweet of you just the same. Spin with me. I won't let you fall." Swaying side to side intentionally, she held her hands up in between them for him to take, her wrists crossed to offer her right for his right and her left for his left.

"Once yeah," he mumbled. "Class field trip when I was a kid."

He might have smiled again, just for a moment while watching her, but let it die away when he thought she was looking again. But even with a pursed and taciturn set of his mouth, blue eyes still danced with a little of the enjoyment of the moment. When she reached for him, he glanced down at her hands. For a few moments, he was surly.

"But it's like... tree glitter." His eyes narrowed.

The sway of her hips wasn't lost on him. The not so subtle curve of her mouth. It only took the better part of a full minute for him to give in, bigger hands closer over hers in just the manner she had silently asked for. Another thirty seconds and he was spinning her for the first time, twirling her slowly and like a pretty little top.

"Oh yeah? I only got to see it, like, twice, but still. Soooo pretty. And you have to catch it at just the right time. A week before and you're too early, a week after and you're too late. They're just petals, it's not that bad." Her laughter bubbled up again, freely offering in the face of his grumpiness. At best she was undaunted by his protestations and for all of his grousing, he still seemed intent on indulging her. Such things made her time in this weird ass place halfway bearable, as if maybe the world wasn't as awful as she first thought.

"Faster!" She giggled, spinning and twirling, her feet working an almost graceful shuffle reminiscent of the ballet classes her mother had insisted upon as a child. There was a certain pleasure in feeling the world tilt, sent topsy-turvy by upended balance and the whirling of the trees and the river and him. "Faster, pleeeease."

In recent weeks, the grousing and agitation had been less sincere and more of a show, a half-hearted preservation of the status quo the she had come to treat more like a game within the privacy of their shared company. In the outside world, it was more genuine out of deeply ingrained habit. The sweet melody of her laughter was infectious, though in him it garnered little more than an uncertain half smile, but when she made the suddenly demand, Tralle found little reason to not give in. Faster and faster he twirled her, like a little ballerina and keeping himself stationary all the while.

"Ya gotta..." She had to try and get herself to stop laughing before she could finish her sentence, spinning so quickly that she was almost certain she might take off like a helicopter leaf in reverse. "Gotta spin too..."

Regardless, she didn't seem intent on stopping until the world spun with such ferocity that she had no choice but to stutter step to a halt, her bubbling laugh dying down to a lingering giggle. Soft blossom petals no larger than the pad of her thumb had caught in her hair, lending a certain whimsical feel to the breathless starry eyed look she gave him when she finally slowed herself down. Across the river, the faerie lights of Little Elfhame played backdrop to the surreal moment. It was fleeting, ephemeral in how quickly it was there and gone, lost when her lingering dizziness had her swaying and taking a pair of quick steps to keep from falling on her butt, giggles summoned once more.

"I don't spin," he informed her gently without growling the words. "But you can spin all you want but..."

And there she went. The little giggles were worth another twitch of a smile before his hands were steadying her, drawing her in to offer up a solid presence for her to lean against as she got her bearings again. One of those hands lifted to brush dark strands of hair from her face, drawing them around behind her neck so that he could give her face a fleeting study in profile.

There was no time to protest, no chance to argue, the persistent fit of giggles had already decided otherwise. Once more she had pushed herself to breathlessness, her soft panting mixing with interspersed trills of laughter, soft and sweet in the space between them. When the rest of the world was threatening to dump her on her bum, he was a wall of steady that her fingers latched on to, curling against the thick leather that he wore like an unnecessary outer shell. After all, he already had a solid enough fortress erected around him emotionally. Exhaling one last laugh, she smiled and looked up at him, her brows rising as if to try and read him like the books she so loved.

"...Hey you..."

"Glad I didn't miss this." They were quiet words, as if he feared anyone but her might hear the admission. He was more Chris and less Tralle then, some small charm from a younger forgotten man, scattered across the broader exterior of toughness for her to glimpse. "Worth it for your smile alone."

She hadn't been sure and that unsurety was readily evident in the way she studied him, looking for some hint that maybe she hadn't been more of an annoyance by dragging him out of bed when he had been out all night. Where hesitance reigned, soon relief washed over it on the tail end of his soft admission and for what wasn't the first time that night, her cheeks ached with the weight of her grin. Cassie was almost grateful for the already present red in her cheeks if only because it made it easier to pass off the blush that she felt warming her skin as she huffed a soft laugh into a drop of her chin, her gaze falling with the motion as well. "I, um, uhhh... I don't... know what I was going to say... but, um, yeah. I thought... maybe you might like it... or something."

He reached up to touch the corner of her wide smile with a light pass of a thumb's pad, tracing along the side of her jaw. His shoulder slumped beneath the weight of the calm that washed over him in the moment. "I like it. Thank you, Cassie."

Without bringing her chin up, her eyes lifted to touch his, amber finding blue in the darkening twilight. For almost two seconds, she closed her eyes with the touch of his calloused finger, the edge of her mouth quivering with the threat of rising higher. A slight shuffling of her feet pulled her almost toe to toe with him, her fingers still thoroughly caught up in the stiff leather of his jacket. "O-okay, good. You're welcome. I wasn't sure. Um, but yeah, this is all I wanted to show you... so if you want we can go back..."

"We can stay," he offered. "Until the sun goes down."

His arms encircled her slender frame, drawing her in, less an offer of comfort and more a demand for the feel of her snug against his larger form. His cheek rested atop her head, even as he angled their position towards the slow dip of the sun, the amber-red of its dying light.

"Maybe feed you?"

"We... we don't have to..." She murmured, her smile still not dimming. It would likely light their way back home in its rivalry of the setting star on the horizon. Tilting just a little to peek up at him as he reangled her, Cassie leaned back against the solid wall that was Tralle. "But I'm kinda hungry if you are..."

"What would make you happy? Staying for a bit then eating or eating now? I'll eat either way." One arm was snug around her middle, his hand open and flat against her soft belly, and the other resting along the curve of her hip. He plied the question quietly, as if he wanted no one else to ear and it lacked his typical agitated rumble.

It was an odd sort of public intimacy, something almost never offered by the man who played keeper to the little bird. But, tucked away on Old Temple's crest as they were, away from prying eyes, they could almost be normal. Almost. Her arms settled over top of the one that belted her in against him and she hummed a contemplative note as she tried to decide.

"Will ya, eh?" It was a shameless grin she wore, even if he couldn't necessarily see it from that angle. She trailed off into a giggle and shrugged. "I sort of skipped lunch so I could probably eat a horse like right now."

"Does being hung like one count?" At that angle, she couldn't see his face either or the small smile that slowly grew until the threat of laughter shook his chest. That she would feel. Tralle squeezed her into a hug then and turned his attention back towards the slow descent of the sun over the horizon. "Tell me what you're hungry for and we'll go there. We can take a cab outside of the Row if it's far."

"Oh..." Her own surprised laugh was hardly muted even by the wrap of his arms around her. Cassie's cheeks blazed with the same fire that lit up the western horizon, accented by the gold of her gaze in much the same way the sun stretched trails of gold across the sea where the river poured itself out for the last time. "My. Gosh."

Twisting around in his grasp, she found herself chest to chest with him, her chin lifting upwards so she wasn't talking into his neck. "Spaghetti. With meatballs, and no dirty jokes when I put them in my mouth."

"We can do that." Tralle bumped his forehead against hers gently and gave her one more squeeze, low around the hips, before drawing back reluctantly. "Come on. Spaghetti and meatballs. And then wherever or whatever else." There was a charity in the offer but not out of pity. In the moment, the beast of the Row very much wanted to dote on the pretty slip of a young woman.

"With no dirty jokes too?" She asked, her gaze narrowing skeptically until she got confirmation out of him. The last thing she needed was to choke on her dinner because he just had to make a comment. A soft giggle weaseled its way free in response to the squeeze, her eyes closing before popping back open when he faded back from her. "Oh."

A private flush of red tinted her cheeks and she stuffed her hands into her pockets, mostly to try and find someone to fidget with. It gave her a chance to stare at the ground, the layer of cherry blossom petals carpeting water worn concrete and staining it the same shade of pink as her face. Her right hand closed around something, drawing it out for examination. Chapstick, good fidgeting tool. Wriggling the cap off, she applied a thin layer of cherry flavor across both lips, smacked them together with a pop and finally gave him a nod. "Okay, let's go."

[Cassidy Finch]

4/6/16

Precious few people knew how painful anger could be. Christopher Tralle could have taught a class on it. It had been an intimate companion of his for more than half a decade, bubbling terribly beneath the surface of his skin and always under a threat of consuming him. On another night, he would have given in, would have lashed out at the source of his ire.

Had it been anyone but Cassie.

He held it in as he stomped quickly down the porch steps and thrust himself across the small lawn towards the nearest street. He drew in on himself and bowled through more than one fellow pedestrian, snarling a threat at each one to keep them from reacting out of anything but fear or, at worst, wariness. His pace wasn't especially fast, but there was a purpose to his need for distance. He had to hold the Beast in.

One.

He was already gone, neither leather nor smoke visible from the Inn's window.

Two.

Cassie's nose pressed against the cold glass, each exhale flaring fogginess that made it even more difficult to see out.

Three.

She swore she would give him exactly ten minutes before starting after him, just enough to make it seem like she wasn't going to but not enough that she would be in his proverbial blast radius.

Four.

Her heels bounced every other second, bobbing the anxious girl up and down while the patrons of the inn continued to ignore her presence as they had done since she and Tralle had arrived.

Five.

Maybe she had gone too far. It was a silly bet. A silly, stupid bet.that ended in him leaving in a rage, his hand full of shattered glass.

Six.

Perhaps she should consider staying at the Inn instead. He wouldn't want to see her after that. He wouldn't want her.

Seven.

Her chest felt more and more tight with each tock of the water clock. The dark outside was so very dark and the Row was unforgiving. Tralle was unforgiving too.

Eight.

He was her only friend in the entire world (literally) and she had pushed him away for what? The sake of trying to win a bet with a lie?

Nine.

It had been weeks since her last panic attack but she felt the anxiety rising like mercury in her veins and before the clock ever struck the tenth minute, she was out through the door like shot, the early spring chill making her hard exhales come in billowing curls. Her Converse beat out an ungraceful cadence against cobblestone and pavement, the seams between which melded together so easily it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began until she was tripping over a fault in her footing.

Crap. She had waited too long and he was nowhere to be seen but maybe, just maybe, if she retraced the path they had taken to the Inn to begin with, she might be able to trail him back to the Row. It would make it easier to sneak back to the Cottage within the vague and undefinable boundary of his protective bubble. People didn't cross Tralle after all. Not if they wanted to see another day. Cassie really, really wanted to see another day, preferably in the warmth of Underbridge Cottage. He had been right, it was a cold night and it only made the binding feeling in her chest tighten further. Crap, crap, crap. Where was he?

Cigarette one.

The rage was almost blinding. It had set him on a very fine path back to whence they came, but Tralle paid little heed to anything else. Another person was shoved out of the way, off of their feet. Brushing a bus stop benched ended in it being reduced to splinters. A fist sized chunk of a lightpost went bouncing into traffic. The urge to hurt someone was at an all time high, the anger powerful enough to make him want to curl up into a ball and whimper.

Cigarette two.

He had become aware of his own low growling, of the stares of the sporadic collection of pedestrians who lived far enough away from the Row to not know him. Each look was met with an angry curl of his lip, but he contented himself with avoiding further contact, his pace slowly as the anger ebbed towards something more manageably. Something that felt more normal. It was difficult.

Cigarette three.

It had finally dawned on him that he had all but abandoned Cassie, regardless of the justification, and it stopped him dead in his tracks. She had antagonized him and unwisely so, but in retrospect it was noteworthy to recall the uncertainty that lingered beneath all of her playful cruelty. She had been left to whatever fate the inn's denizens had in store for her and though they had seemed indifferent, things could have changed in his absence. She did rely on him for protection after all... Did she? Would she still? The anger twisted inside of him, warring with other feelings that were less easy to define.

He should wait for her. Shouldn't he? It would serve her right. Maybe she needed a little punishment.

At first it was easy to follow the trail of destruction and bewildered bystanders, the wide sweeping path of Hurricane Tralle easy to see as it wound down out of Dragon's Gate and into the darker parts of the city. But soon the whispers abated, the stares relegated to those who peeked out from barely parted curtains. The longer she had to think, the worse she felt and the closer she came to losing it completely. It had only been a joke, a goading teasing that was meant to try and win that stupid, stupid bet. How much would it cost her? Her mind immediately went to the worst case scenario, her imagination running rampant with the possibilities. He would throw her out, no, he would feed her to a dragon! Or... or... he would let Atticus have her after all. Was it too late for returns?

F*ck.

Where was he? Her pace quickened the closer to the edge of the Row that she got. If she didn't catch up before then, she didn't want to think about the final leg of the walk back to the cottage. Not at this hour. She would be better off turning around and going back to the Inn. The Inn full of dispassionate people who didn't so much as spare her a second glance. Chris saw her. He always had. She wrote her sniffles off as a result of the cold though it was harder to account for the burning in her eyes. So focused on trying to find him, she rushed along the dark streets with her gaze fixed at the distance rather than the immediate vicinity. Six blocks, maybe less, the Row had a habit of sneaking up on the unprepared. It's all she had left.

He had thought about lighting a fourth cigarette and then dismissed the idea. The little bird had always chided him for what she had termed a dirty habit, though she hadn't tried very hard. Instead he shrank into the shadows of a looming building, seeking a false comfort in the obscurity they offered. There was no one to see the softening of his expression. The scowl that became a sad frown. Her bullish sassiness had been very out of character for her, almost mean in the desire to win where she was so often sweet, innocently tantalizing.

It was beneath the latter of those recollections that the anger ebbed a little more, extinguishing some of the inferno of his anger and making her keeper long for things to be different. Then, now, in the future. Tralled looked up just in time catch sight of her approach and the barest glimpse of her expression. It was just beginning to register with him when he reached out on instinct and grabbed her.

Immediately following the closure of his hand upon her, three things happened in such rapid order that there was no way she was even conscious of them. It was hard to tell what came first but her frame jolted like she had touched a hot stove. Her lips parted to loose a panicked gasp of a scream right as she burst into tears and, as a matter of most minimal self preservation, she twisted and punched at her assailant with her clenched right fist as hard as she could. Which admittedly wasn't necessarily enough to do damage but the frantic effort behind it was at the very least admirable. Her eyes had squeezed shut tightly against the sting of the sudden spill of tears and when she reopened them, her vision was blurred but she could just barely make him out.

"O-oh, oh gosh. I'm s-sorry. I'm... so sorry," she gasped out through a sob, her shoulders sinking with the sudden release of fight-or-flight reaction.

His grip tightened almost immediately when she struck him, a harmless blow that narrowly missed his face and found a home against his shoulder. A grunt was her reward for the strike, followed by a growl that was purely instinct. What Tralle hadn't been prepared for was the sudden waterworks, a breakdown of significant proportions that, after a few long moments, saw his grip shifting and her petite body being hauled in against his.

In that moment, the anger melted away completely, and his long arms were encircling her tightly.

I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry

The mantra was repeated against his chest endlessly, broken only by the shudders of each sob as they reached their peak before dying down to a tremor of her frame and a rough sniff as she tried to regain her composure. It took close to five minutes for the fit of tears to abate and it left her cheeks splotchy and her chest racked with hiccups. Burying her hot face against the cool leather of his jacket, she resisted speaking until she was certain she could do it without losing it all over again. The smell of cigarette smoke was heavy on him, laid over an earthy comfort that she had come to call familiar over the past nearly two months of knowing him. But there was no chiding, not under the weight of her guilt.

"I... I... It was a joke... I didn't mean..."

hic!

"For you to get s-so upset."

hic! hic!

"And your hand," she groaned mournfully, the tide of tears once more threatening her lash line even as she hiccuped again, "nnngh, your hand, I'm so sorry... Please don't leave me... I'm sorry..."

He should have still been mad.

He wanted to still be mad.

The soft sobs that shook her slender little body washed away whatever agitation that remained and had rendered the Beast surprisingly silent. No, not silent. The passage of time and her terrified apology gave birth to quiet reassurances. They were little at first, paltry nothings mumbled in near unintelligible fashion, letting his tone do the placating. But as Cassie got more worked up, Tralle gave way to Chris, her Chris, the one she'd come to know, and gentle words found a home in the wealth of dark hair atop her head.

"It's... we'll deal with it later. It's okay. J-just stop crying. We can fix it. You can fix it. Shhhhh."

Never underestimate the power of a girl crying to assuage a boy's anger. Another five minutes teetered on the halfway mark to ten before she finally stopped crying fully, her shoulders heaving as she gulped in deep breaths of the stagnant cold air. Even the jarring hiccups abated to tiny mouselike squeaks instead of rough jolts through her chest. When she finally got the gall to lean back from her hiding spot against him, she hesitantly drew her gaze up the length of his neck and over the sharp planes of his jaw and cheekbone to meet his eyes, expecting the deep, dark blue that was only beautiful in the cruel way that the minutes after midnight were; because they meant morning would come eventually, if you could make it that long.

"I-I'm sorry, Chr... um, Tralle," she barely caught herself, silently admonishing herself for the almost slip. Not as though the barren streets had discernible ears with which to hear her (or so she thought), but still. "I just, I wanna go home... with you..."

During some time in the last few minutes, the ferocious storm in his eyes had abated and cleared to that of a burgeoning summer sky in the midafternoon when a hard rain had passed. The anger had since faded and his brows had pushed together in a pained concern that he had yet lent a voice to, but one hand (the uninjured one) smoothed over the small of her back along the delicate ridge of her spine. He didn't smile when she looked up at him, but met her gaze and the begged requested with a short, affirmative nod.

"We can go home," he murmured a moment later, leaning in to kiss her forehead. "We'll go to the cottage, make everything right..."

[Cassidy Finch]

4/11/2016

Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might…

Not everything was as terrible in the Row as Tralle made it out to be. There were places where sweet daylight and delight touched the winding cobblestone and brick streets; merry laughter echoed off the stone barriers encasing lush parks and the smell of fresh bread and spices drifted from open shop doors. There were nights will with clear skies and the uncountable pinpricks of twinkling stars, constellations that moved with the months and didn't belong to the Rhy'din denizens outside the confounding pocket knew.

It was on nights like those that Underbridge Manor didn't feel so ominous. Amidst the rolling fog, dreary rain or torrential downpours, and fierce storms, the palatial mansion looked like some Hitchcockian horror house, draped in shadows and looming over the grounds from its hilltop perch as if to reach out and ensnare the unwary. It was old, rickety, and terribly kept, leaving anyone who knew him to wonder what sort of caretaker or groundskeeper Christopher Tralle really was. It was hard to chalk up the wailing moans and echoing cries to harsh winds or the creak of old carpentry, to blame irritating animals. More often than not it appeared a lifeless husk, an empty shell that time forgot (or wanted to forget), even if it rarely felt empty.

Save for the western wing.

Large enough to be a manor itself, it occupied the western quarter of the oddly shaped building, settled on a rolling slope of hill that overlooked the small copse of green forest the caretaker cottage was nestled tight into. It was in less disrepair than the rest of Underbridge Manor, its roof unbowed and not sagging with age and environmental abuse, its paint less chipped. More than one lamp lit the tall windows of the wing on most nights, sometimes moving from room to room and sometimes stationary. Loathe as Cassie's keeper had been about divulging details regarding his stewardship, the west wing seemed to put him more at ease than the others, though he never said why.

But there had been books. He had brought them from there. Old, well kept tomes bound in canvas and leather, classical stories and informative text, contemporary to ancient. They were sporadic treats for the little bird.

Many a night had been spent poring over Tralle's offerings, his little leather and paper appeasements given in good faith to a girl he didn't seem to understand save for her voracious literary appetite. But on this night of nights, she found herself wanting. It had taken less than two months for her to make her way through the books in the cottage and any others he had brought with him from the main manor. The library had helped fill her speed reading gaps but even still, she was left empty handed and the television lacked anything that she wanted to watch. It was why, when she passed by a window with a bare glimpse of the manor, she stopped to eye it contemplatively.

He had been adamant that she not venture up there. It was ancient and crumbling on the best of days and quite likely a safety hazard, if she had to venture a guess. But the night sky was clear and Rhydin's twin moons lit a silvery path through the woods toward the westernmost tip of Underbridge. Maybe she could just...

Yes. She could just run these books back, pick new ones out, and be back before he ever knew she was gone. It was chilly but not unbearable, so she pulled her Chucks on and didn't bother changing out of her pajamas, the flimsy tank top and shorts doing little to guard her against the cool springtime air. Collecting the most recent books to be brought down from the manor, she held them tight to her chest like they were the most precious cargo, and slipped out of the cottage. Cassie shut the door gently behind her, as if the soft click would somehow alert Tralle that she was leaving even if he wasn't supposed to be home for awhile. The little forest cast ominous shadows that had her hurrying along the unfamiliar path but soon she broke the treeline and had a clear view of the manor. Once upon a time it had been majestic but now it was just a sorry sight. Even from that distance, the grand staircase that led up to the front door looked unsafe so she sought a different way in and found it in the form of a narrow spiral staircase tucked away behind a vine laden trellis. At the top, the terrace offered a lovely view of the night shadowed property but she didn't linger to take it in, instead jiggling a doorknob to a heavy door. It was well oiled and quiet, like it was used often, but still took her full weight thrown behind her shoulder to get it open and when it popped, she nearly fell on her face. When she recovered, the curious little bird let her eyes adjust to the lacking light, slats of moonlight cutting long rectangles across the floor of the high ceiling capped room.

"Huh... this place isn't that bad..."

There was some small reassurance to be found closer to the mundane portals that dotted the western wing of the manor, bettered tended and with unbroken glass panes filling the windows. The other means of entering, and the rest of the large structure itself, put one beneath the pall of a palpable aura of foreboding and horrid promise. It ebbed in the west, falling away like crumbling masonry beneath the ravages of time to another feeling altogether. It was like walking out the rising crescendo of a horror film's climax into...

A wake... That awkward moment when you walked into the viewing at a funeral home or the wake after, to someone you didn't know, but still felt the weight of their unfortunate death. Or perhaps a hospice, meandering through a place of the near death or dying, the slow passing of one age, the loss of something significant but not dear.

Cassie's snooping and subsequent stumble had dumped her into a secondary dining room, a more intimate setting that seemed more appropriate for family meals than entertaining guests. The walls and ceilings were arched in a very Gothic Revival style favored by the Georgian area, plants and animals of all sorts etched into wood relief for the aesthetic value of the occupants. The furniture was done in like fashion, an oak table of modest length with a series of cushioned chair settled around it.

There wasn't a speck of dust to be found anywhere.

Cassidy hovered in the doorway, rocked forward onto her toes until her Converse bent in such a way that, had she realized, she would have been absolutely appalled by herself. A burst of wind at her back ushered her further in and bumped the door open far enough that it bounced off the wall and swung back toward a closed position. She sidestepped its arc and avoided getting smacked by the heavy thing. At one point, she was certain she had seen lights from one of these very windows but there were no artificial lights to be found, only moonlight and shadows chasing one another across a grandiose and surprisingly spotless layout. Squinting into the dark, she soaked up the minutiae just enough that a little subconscious shiver wiggled its way down her spine and sent her lurching into motion, intent on completing her task as quickly as possible so she could rid herself of the itchy sort of feeling one got when the hair on the back of their neck stood on end. Just shy of the dining room's exit into a dark hallway beyond, a niggling feeling had her pausing. She glanced back but found nothing amiss. At least nothing she could put her finger on.

Boards creaking underfoot, she tucked herself tight to a hallway laced with darkness and only the lingering bit of light drawn from the dining room's crystal clear windows. She was certain, absolutely certain even, that the library Chris had always pulled the books from had been in the west wing. After all, with how decrepit the rest of the building was, it only made sense. In her mind she pictured a library of her dreams, walls full of sturdy shelves crawling toward a vaulted ceiling so high that it needed one of those sliding ladders. An endless number of books that ranged the gamut from the mundane to the fantastic would await, if the sampling brought by her so called keeper was any indication. The doors that she tried were either locked or led to boring rooms filled with antique furnishings, much like the dining room had been. She was about to lose hope as she turned the hall's corner, when she found the study. The door was ajar just enough to be noticeable and so she wasted no time in investigating, peeking inside to find something far less than what she expected. There were shelves, yes. There were books too. But it was a modest thing, if she were being honest, and she almost wondered if perhaps this were just a taste of something more. Gaps on the shelves though fit perfectly with the books she carried in hand, so she haphazardly returned them to their homes and scanned the spines of those she hadn't yet read.

Classics. Recognizable titles. Foreign things that she couldn't make out. She grabbed at random, one, two, three, and made quick tracks back to the door. Diving back into the dark hall, she tugged the door shut behind her, turned and ran right into a side table that she could have sworn hadn't been there before. "Hnn--oof! What... in the..."

The door shut far harder than she intended, the slam of aged wood against the sturdy frame echoing loudly down the previously silent hall. Echoing, echoing.Slam. Slam. Slam. Slam. It went on like a domino effect, each slam growing softer but never quite abating, as if every door for a mile was following suit.

Ahead of her, the table played the silent, inert sentinel, red mahogany curved with the soft and wavy swirls that ended in delicate floral patterns. There was a single dirt smudge on the long cloth draping its middle, red embroidery marking out words in some foreign tongue.

Beautiful, was the single word, a whisper on a cool draft that whipped through the hallway. Beautiful bird. Blessings upon the house... Soft words. Ethereal. Eerily sweet. Come to bring light, little bird?

[Cassidy Finch]

"Um..." The girl paused, blinking into the dark. First looking down one side of the hallway and then the other, she jammed her pinky finger into her ear and gave it a wiggle. It did nothing to chase away the tickling touch of inhuman words on the edge of her ear nor the ever present feeling that she was being watched. She touched a few fingers to her head to make sure she hadn't somehow knocked it in her stumbling and sure enough, she seemed perfectly fine.

Because hearing voices is totally normal.

"Sorry about that," she said hesitantly, two fingertips grazing the edge of the table to trace its outline and verify its position as she took a step around it. Further down the hall, the doors on both sides were shut snugly in their frames though she could have sworn that the nearest still wobbled with the shockwaves of being roughly thrust back into their resting places. Cassie turned back the way she had come from, wholly intent on clearing out of the strange manor as quickly as she could.

Did you see the røv on her, ja? It was another hushed rush of sound, audible but directed away from her. Like a conversation not directed towards pretty human ears. Not like the others, ja. Brave. So little but brave. And that røv, oh ho!

Furniture in multiple rooms creaked audibly all at once, like a rickety chorus of wood laughter in some disturbing jest shared. But as quickly as it rose to its climax, the sounds were silenced beneath a another sound, loud and sharp like a whip crack. It happened twice more in rapid succession, faint. Coming from outside.

Run, little bird. The voices said, a whispered rush of surprise and panic. Resignation. Run if you want to live!

“Who’s there?” She called out, her own voice echoing back at her. It was easy to tell that it sounded differently than the whispers whirling around her. There was no way she was going to stay to find out why. Her chest was tight with panic and it was all she could do to keep her breathing steady instead of giving in to the rising anxiety as she ran back down the hallway and toward the dining room. Little things here and there seemed slightly out of place, as if someone had rearranged them in the short time she had been in the study. Had she been gone that long?

The sudden stop to all of the clattering noise had her skidding to a stop halfway down the dining room’s length, her head whipping a look toward the high reaching windows. The sharp sound that had brought the other sounds and voices to such a halting stop was definitely outside. She couldn’t possibly go out there could she? Run they had said. Run. “But where?”

Who? They who! Faceless Who. The whispers were so many that more words were drowned out than not. Make you Faceless too.

Crack. Crack. Crack! The sounds came again, momentarily halting the dull voices drifting through the dining hall, and then something banged against two of the windows, a sound light and tinny like branches striking in a storm.

Run, pretty one. Run, little bird. Run and call to the Beast!

The window most to her right shattered then, giving birth to a gnarly arm wrapped in tattered cloth. Branch like fingers scrabbled over the glass surface and then reached outwards. Then reached for Cassie, suddenly sprouting whip-like vines that cracked at her. Reaching for her. Behind it, more figures loomed. Shambled.

What if she didn't want to be Faceless? Some part of her thought that this was just a bad dream. She had fallen asleep with her face in a book and she'd wake up on the floor of the caretaker's cottage. Everything would be okay. Everything would be fine. There would be no voices, no moving furniture, no banging on the windows. The sky had been clear when she came in, not a cloud in sight and only the faintest of springtime breezes. Certainly nothing that could knock shutters or branches against the window panes.

"I'm going, I'm going!" She yelped, nearly dropping her armful of books as she tripped over a rogue footstool. Without crashing, she regained her footing and scrambled for the dining room's door just as glass shattered. A frantic glance back tossed her hair over her shoulder, a violent maelstrom of deep brown that gave way to the unsettling sight of something neither human nor animal but rather a nightmarish monster reaching through, grasping at her. Cassie didn't stay long enough to give it a chance to touch her, crashing into the door and stumbling back to yank it open. Without bothering to close it behind her, she tripped out onto the terrace, sucking in cool night air to break the feverish sweat that made her tank top stick to her back. As far as she saw, there was only one logical way down to the ground and that was the spiral staircase she had taken to get there in the first place. That would also mean going down there. Terrified tears stung at her eyes, blurring her vision as she spun down the staircase. "Ohgodohgodohgodohgod. Tralle, where are you."

Crack, crack, crack!

There were four of them outside the window, easier to see when she gained some open ground. They could have been taken straight from a Rob Zombie remake of The Nightmare Before Christmas, tall, gaunt beings with more length in their limbs than torso, with an ugly dirty flesh made of what appeared to be bark and moss beneath rotting clothing that perpetually threatened to fall off. Small branches sprouted from heads that were too round. Branches and bones, pushing through the tight, ugly flesh at the oddest of angles. There faces were... well, they had no faces!

Crack, crack, crack!

Their finger snapped together rapidly, each admitting that whipping sound, something passing between them. Communication. They looked at each other and then they looked at the little bird.

They lurched towards her then, long strides chasing her towards the staircase and then leaping over the edge to the soft soil below.

Cassie wanted to do many things. She wanted to scream, she wanted to cry, she wanted to throw up. Not necessarily in that order. Nowhere on that list did she want to go anywhere near the faceless things. Why had she gone outside? The voices had told her to run and she ran. It was either outside or wait for them to come in, she rationalized over the hammering of her heart in her ears. She reached the bottom of the spiral stairs and burst out onto the hill that led back down to the dark forest where the keeper's cottage was.

Scary manor.

Dark forest.

Lovely.

She was by no means athletic but she was little and quick, her Chucks pounding feverishly against the dew slick grass. Crackling of branches and snapping of whip like appendages behind her told her that she shouldn't look back no matter what.

"Don't look, don't look, don't look," she repeated to herself on each harsh exhale, her breath leaving her in tight gasps as she hit the hill at a sprint. The incline served to increase her speed but she knew the same advantage would be afforded to her pursuers and so she focused on keeping her legs moving as fast as she could. Three quarters of the way down, she got going just a little bit too quickly and stumbled, tucking into a roll that was graceful enough that it surprised even Cassie that she was able to scramble up and keep going. A dull ache in her wrist was nothing compared to the sharp stabbing of a stitch in her side but she could have sworn she could see the cottage's warm candlelight through the trees and it served as a beacon, calling her to safe haven.

Crack, crack, crack.

Crack, crack, crack.

Crack, crack, CRACK!

The little bird was quick but her pursuers had a long stride to them, a steady, looping gait that kept them on pace with the alacrity she displayed beneath the terror of the moment. Two more of the earthy scarecrows joined the pursuit, short and quicker than the others and bearing a faint crimson sheet along their ugly hands. One of those nasty appendages was what caught her, a scant hundred yards from the safety of the cottage.

CRACK!

The vine whipped around her ankle and stopped her hard enough to upend her, the solid soil of the manor grounds coming up fast to meet her.

Her high pitched scream pierced the night, shaking free even the sleeping birds from their nests. Robins and starlings, finches and jays, fluttering a frantic beating of wings but no squawks. There were predators afoot far greater than the usual fare of the Row and so, through some innate sense of self-preservation, the disturbance was quieted just as quickly as it began. Cassie felt her foot yanked out from underneath her and her scream echoed until she hit the ground. The books she had been carrying were smashed against her chest with enough force to thrust the air from her lungs and her squeal turned into a pained croak. Dirt and grass stained the previously pure white cotton of her pajamas, smearing them in green and brown as she twisted and kicked, doing everything she could to try and free herself from the faceless creature's grasp.

"No, no, no, please, no....," she sobbed, salty tears streaking paths through the dirt on her face, cutting jagged little clearing against lightly freckled but still pale skin. The books had been let go, forgotten upon the ground in her panic as her hands instead grabbed at the ground in an exercise of utmost futility. Thick clumps of grass were ripped up, mud and dirt catching under breaking nails as she scrabbled for purchase. Maybe if she screamed louder someone would hear her. The walls surrounding Underbridge Manor were tall, but what more could she do?

"HELP!" One scream.

"Oh my God, please HELP ME!" A second.

Call to the Beast.

"TRALLLLLLLLLE!"

[Cassidy Finch]

Thud-duh-duh-dum.

Thud-duh-duh-dum.

It was a faint tremor in the land below her, something easy to ignore as the crackling horrors dragged her slowly back towards them. Her other ankle had been taken up, making her backwards slide all the more quick. There was red mixed with the mud splattering her ankles and calves, the as of yet dried blood of another victim rubbing off from capturing tendrils. It would be Cassie's blood that coated them next.

Thud-duh-duh-dum.

Thud-duh-duh-dum.

The earth was shaking beneath what sounded and felt like a four beat drumroll, the muffled thump of something heavy striking the earth at a familiar place. It was almost like... hoof beats. Steady. Closer.

Thud-duh-duh-dum.

Thud-duh-duh-dum.

Six Faceless heads leaned in closer to their prey and seemed possessed of no concern for the shaking earth, the steady thump of limbs heralding a new arrival. It was old had to them.

Except...

Something massive and hairy struck their terrible little group, much like a bowling ball struck the pins during a perfectly bowled strike. The horrible, faceless beings were scattered in all directions. Massive and snarling like some prehistoric, rampaging carnivore, the little bird's would-be rescuer blotted out the light of Rhy'din's twin moons as it loomed directly over her, all but straddling her petite form as it bellowed a challenge.

It could have passed for her heartbeat, wild and hammering in its cage and all the way up into her ears, rattling her head until she couldn't think straight. There was a string of indecipherable sobs mixed with begging and pleading for them to let her go, little oaths and prayers sworn between frantic protestations as her fingers left deep ruts in the tremoring earth. Her stomach and the front of her thighs were scraped against the rough ground as she was pulled further and further from salvation, the sanctity of the warm cottage ahead slipping out of her grasp. But soon the cracking of violently whipping limbs gave way to a sudden clatter of bowled over bodies, the Faceless sent sprawling and Cassie released. Her feet thumbed to the ground, her calves and ankles and shoes,--oh her poor Chucks!,-- coated in mud and blood, though thankfully not her own.

Cassie thought she was free.

Until she looked up.

What loomed over her may have very well been far worse than what she had been facing before. Much like the alleyway and Atticus months earlier, it seemed as though she were trading scary for terrifying, bad for worse. Her head spun as she fought to calm herself enough to breathe, but there seemed no logical way out and her panic kicked into overdrive, pushing her to the verge of hyperventilating as she dug dirty, bleeding fingers into the ground one last time and pulled herself to her knees. She kept low though, low enough that she wouldn't touch the bellowing thing standing over top of her, and slunk toward the treeline.

Whatever it was, it was powerfully built. Heavy muscle did nothing to diminish the creature's natural speed, which was on display as it whipped its massive torso left and right to keep all six Faceless beneath the weight of its bestial scrutiny. With the moons at its back, little more could be made of the creature besides a pair of thick, deeply curled horns atop its head, reminiscent of a ram's.

Another challenge was snarled at the ugly stick men, who seemed suddenly unsure of what the new threat was about or why it was even a threat to then so suddenly at all. That was until they saw their prey escaping. It prompted a sudden rush at her rescuer, who met the rush with outstretched claws.

"Cassie," the thick-tongued, guttural words spilled from its maw, very deep. "Run. Run home now!"

And then fur and earth clashed beneath a din of whip cracks and feral snarls, fresh dirt churned up and sent flying.

Don't pass out. Don't pass out. Don't pass out.

She really wanted to, pass out that is. Her chest felt like it was in a vice and her vision tunneled until all she could see was the cottage straight ahead. The crackling of limbs coming her direction again had her sobbing out and scrambling to her feet, the world tilting dangerously with the motion. But her name cut through the air and brought her to a complete halt. Cassie twisted around to stare wide eyed at the moonlit silhouette of her Hellish savior, but he was urging her to run and the Faceless were closing in so she turned and ran like the wind was carrying her.

With the cacophony of violence at her back, she dashed full speed through the trees and shoved through the cottage's gate so hard that it slammed on the back swing. She met the door of the cottage at a run and it burst open to dump her inside. Catching herself painfully on her hands and knees, she kicked a foot back to shut the door behind her and threw herself back as well, her shoulders meeting the thick wood. Fingers felt for the lock and she twisted it, keeping her back to the door as if her meager weight would help hold off anything that might follow. Shaking and terrified, she pulled her knees to her chest and buried her face as she cried.

The conflict raged for what seemed like an eternity. The cracks of the whip-like vines were broken by the more significant sound of splintering wood and rasping moans; the feral snarls were interrupted twice by a pained, almost agonized bellow. Shadows danced beneath the moon on the impromptu field of battle, dwindling with time until they became as still as the sound, falling away to nothing.

For a time after that, silence reigned.

It was hard to say for how long or what still lingered outside of the small cottage. The night itself became normal again, the chirp of crickets heralding normalcy's return and then...

...the door handle jiggled a little.

"NO!" She squealed as she sat bolt upright, her heels scraping against the floor as she pressed back against the locked door with all of her might. For all of the calm that had washed over the forest and the open landscape beyond, Cassie couldn't quite get the sound out of her head of brittle sounding vines cracking like leather whips against soft flesh or the echoing roar of whatever it was that had come to her aid. It had known her name, had sent her back to the cottage, had saved her life. She moaned mournfully and twisted around onto her scraped up knees, leaning up just enough to peek through the door's keyhole as if she might be able to discern whether whomever was beyond was friend or foe.

"Wh-who is it?"

"I'm tired." Tralle's voice was muffled through the thick oak portal. "Let me in, Cassie."

Her heart jumped into her throat at much the same time she jumped to her feet. It took a few tries for her shaking hands to fumble the lock open but finally she got it and yanked the door open to peer out at the man outside. "Oh gosh, it's you. It's really you..."

As true as his voice, her keeper stood before her, leaning his weight slightly to one side and looking a little worse for the wear. His clothing was torn and muddy, heavy splashes of brown streaked through with red, the garments clinging to his muscular frame for dear life. His skin was scratched and red in places, the only real pain evident in the way he chewed on the inside of his cheek uncertainly.

Murky blue eyes stared down at her for a moment before he finally stepped inside and pushed the door closed, her lost books tucked tightly beneath one arm. "You dropped these..."

He looked even worse than she felt. Her gaze, more hazel than amber in the moment, raked over him to drink in every haggard detail. Quickly she stepped to one side to allow him entry, backing off to give him space as he shut the door. She wanted to reach around him and lock it, to make certain that whatever had been out there stayed out there. But the books under his arm and his rough words drew her eyes back to him.

Books.

Tralle.

Books.

Chris.

Cassie had the forethought to look guilty at first but as the gears set to turning and things began to click into place, her eyes widened and she took an inadvertent step back. "I... I..."

If there were more words, they never came.

"...live with a monster," he finished the sentence for her, looking away. The books were deposited on the nearby table, his broad back turned on her to reveal more scratches and a wealth of bruises. Tralle didn't stop to offer further explanation, didn't see to think there wa s a good one to give, as he moved towards the open door of their bathroom and began shedding the wreckage of his clothes.

"N-no! That's not... that's not what I..." Her voice broke in pitch when he turned away, her lashline burning again. As her teeth raked over her bottom lip hard enough to threaten to draw blood, she rocked forward and back on her feet, contemplating just what to do or say. Cassie glanced toward the books on the table, their covers dirtied and dented but not nearly as bad as the man retreating to the bathroom. Finally she stumbled into motion, feather light steps carrying her in his wake until she reached the edge of his shadow. Standing there in silence for a moment that seemed to stretch on endlessly, she finally softly cleared her throat and stepped into the bathroom's light. "Here, l-let me help..."

[Cassidy Finch]

By the time he was across the threshold of the bathroom and past, Tralle had stripped down to nothing but his boxerbriefs which had, ironically, been spared. Scratch and bleeding in places, his body was a canvas for some crazed artist's drugged up rendition of a not so epic struggle. Each bend and reach of his body was punctuated by a soft, breathy grunt, a sound that dragged out into a low hiss when he bent down to remove the last of his clothing.

"It's what I am," he told her softly, the words escaping in a slow growl. "A monster. You saw." Watery blue eyes glance down at her, his mouth pursed pensively and his arms wrapping slowly around himself. This moment, for him, felt like the beginning of the end.

"Shhh," she said softly, almost soothingly as she stepped fully into the bathroom. Only inches away, she leaned up on her toes to fish through the medicine cabinet for bandages and other miscellaneous supplies. Her fingertips were raw and many of her fingernails were broken, so she took a few moments to wash her hands, holding her breath through the stinging. Rather than stain another towel, she dried them off on her shorts then turned toward him, a bottle of peroxide in hand.

"I... I don't really know... or understand what happened... or if I'm maybe just dreaming... but... but...," struggling for words, she took a few slow breaths to calm herself, her amber eyes closing while she did. When she reopened them, she continued on a different path than originally planned. "Turn around, let me see your back."

"You saw me. The other me. All of me." He stared down at her beneath the ridge of a furrowed brow, reaching out for her once and then decided against it, ruddy hands stilled where they were half way to her. "I..."

Tralle fell silent again and, surprisingly, did what he was told without arguing with her. Or growling.

"I... I did," she conceded quietly. Cassie wanted to touch him, to caress each line that marred his skin and tell him that everything would be okay. But even the most optimistic of little birds are allowed a cynical side. Swapping peroxide over open cuts, the smaller ones were covered with sticky bandaids while the larger ones were cleaned a second time before she layered gauze squares over them and taped them down.

"You also saved me... from those... those things...," she pointed out, touching the heel of her hand to his shoulder. "Turn around. Please."

The start of a wince became a bubbling growl when the sting of peroxide soaked material touched the first would, causing him his muscles to tense and his body to puff up in a sudden burst of pain and rage. He bit back the snarl that should have followed, chewing quietly on any number of expletives that he was loathe to unleash on her, but quietly seethed for each fresh sting of pain.

"Yeah," he eventually mumbled, a small concession made in the admission as his body responded to her direction. His blue eyes were dark but softened. Tempered. "Not gonna let anyone hurt you..."

"Hold still." Urging through clenched teeth, it wasn't as though this was pleasant at all for her. Her lips puckered into a tight purse at much the same time her dark brows knitted inward. Without meeting his eye as he turned, she systematically treated the marks on his front side one after another. The adrenaline had worn off and she teetered between wanting to scream and wanting to cry, so focusing on something like that was exactly what she needed to make sure she didn't do either of those. With his major wounds cleaned and patched, she ventured a flicker of a golden eyed glance up at him before averting her eyes and turning toward the sink to wash her hands again.

"...I know." Once her hands were dry, she took some time to tend the worst of her own wounds, mostly split nails and scrapes but nothing that compared to what he had sustained. "Tell me what to say, because I don't know..."

There had been a boy, once upon a time. He had loved laughing. He had been a sweet talker and a voracious flirt. He loved people and, despite an odd and unexpectedly prophetic upbringing, had been very full of life. Brimming with it. He had been deep, open, and ready for change.

That boy had died at the foot of Ejer Bavnehøj/Møllehøj in Denmark, screaming at the heavens and the ones who took him like some viking hero, dauntless in the face of death. It had been after that, after they had broken him, that he had learned of the Debt. Of his Curse. After that, the world had been nothing but pain. Solitude.

Until Cassidy Finch.

The Little Bird had changed everything.

Tralle should have had something profound to say. Christopher Tralle should have buried her beneath a litany of words and feelings, a compilation of every little nuanced thing he had learned around her in their short few months together. All the little details that had made her so much more than just the petite girl he had been drawn to upon first laying eyes on her. More. So much more.

But his head and his heart didn't want to cooperate.

In the end, all he said was, "Tell me you won't leave me."

Without a word, she gently took his hand and pulled him toward the bathroom door. She was dirty and tired, her pajamas stained with worse things than grass. Her muscles ached like she had run a marathon and really she just wanted to collapse face down on the daybed tucked into the corner of the tiny cottage. Instead she went to the couch where she sat, pulling him down and tugging him toward her, intent on making him lay down with his head in her lap.

"Shh, I'm not going anywhere."

Half zombie, half oversized dog, he ambled along in her wake at her urging, another pained growl bubbling up when she drew him towards the lumpy and lopsided comfort of the couch. A soft sigh wheezed free upon impact, the coarse stubble of his jaw scraping over the top of her thigh and his gaze falling towards the ugly shag throw rug before them.

He didn't say anything for a time, merely seeking out the warmth of her comfort.

One he groused and grumped his way onto the couch, she set about soft, featherlight touches through his hair and along the line of his jaw. They were chaste things, gentle and soothing. Mostly she was making it up as she went. Ever since her arrival she had felt out of her element but she understood what a difference it could make to simply have someone there during the low times. A quiet little tune thrummed in her throat, something equal parts lullaby and senseless notes accented by a quiet sigh.

"Sometimes... sometimes I think that maybe I died and went to Hell or something. And that's what this place is. But then there are other moments, with you usually, that I know that can't be the case." She quieted after the random thought tumbled free, offering no additional insight and returning to the quiet tune and the soft touches through his hair.

Tralle remained silent at the end of her quiet musings, possessed of nothing to add in those moments save for a subtle reach that found his longer fingers curling around her delicate hand claiming it. When he finally did speak, it was in a quiet tone and with far more words than she was accustomed to from him when he was in one of his moods.

"For the last five, maybe six years... I can't remember anymore since it all seems to run together, I can hardly remember a day when I didn't waked up angry and in pain. Never one. Always both. The angrier, the more it hurts. It's... like Hell, yeah. Or what I imagine Hell to be like. Lonely, painful, and miserable. A place where I'm not the me I was, humanity eroding one little chip at a time.

Then you came..."

"You've been here that long?" She asked softly, her tone sad in its surprise. Wetting her lips with a short pass of her tongue, she peeked down at him and tucked her fingers against his. Cassie was quiet as he spoke and even for a few moments after, the weight of the night wearing on her ability to process all that he was saying. Eventually she bent down to brush an awkward kiss to his forehead, lingering there for a moment before sitting back up.

"If it's Hell then at least I've got you. And you've got me. And the heat hasn't been too bad..." One corner of her mouth quivered like she might smile, her weak attempt at a joke making her feel even more awkward.

"You are a soothing balm," he confessed suddenly. "More so than I've ever known."

Sky blue eyes stared up into honeyed amber.

"I... don't even know what that's supposed to mean." She answered, blinking doe-wide eyes down at him. "But... it kind of sounds sweet? I think? Unless it's like IcyHot... then not so much. That stuff burns. When they say hot, they mean hot."

Cassie realized she was rambling and coughed quietly to shut herself up, red seeping into her dirty cheeks. "Um. Yeah. Hi."

"You touch me," he breathed the words out, barely audible, "and nothing hurts. There's no anger. Just... me. Been a long time since I've had that."

"What if... I do this?" She asked as she poked at one of the lesser bruises on his bare arm. Pinning her bottom lip with her teeth, she glanced away from him then right back to the pair of crystalline blues looking up at her. Sheepish regret filled in where playful smartassedness had been a moment before. "Sorry... I'm, um, I'm... really bad at this, Chris. I don't... I've never... I guess..."

Deep breath, breathe Clover.

"I've never really, um, felt like... this," she gestured vaguely between them, "about someone before... and I'm kind of freaking out about a lot of things. And I'm sorry. I just, I don't know what to say or do or... you've got your words and they're such... wow. And me, I'm just. I'm just Cassie. Just me. And I'm bad at this, I'm sorry."

"You can do other things with your mouth that're just as expressive." He tongued the inside of his cheek, making it balloon out, brows lifted and his eyes suddenly wide. Humored.

Cassie sputtered a giggle that likely jostled the sore man more than she intended. It worsened the blush in her cheeks and she gently poked him in the forehead. "Shhhh, don't be dirty. And you're hurt, you need to take it easy."

"I'm going to kiss you now," he told her though a wince from all of the jostling and then reached up to slip on hand into her hair, fingers curling around the back of her neck to slowly bring her mouth down to his. It was warm and sweet and gentle, a lingering bit of tender affection that ended when he was murmuring again. "You are very special, Cassie Finch. A rare beauty and a treasure."

"Oh... okay," she said lamely in the time it took him to pull her down to him. His hands were rough but his mouth was gentle and she met the moment with ample alacrity, her lips hot on his for the few moments that they touched. Softly she exhaled against him as he spoke, nosing against his cheek before leaning back so her neck didn't ache. "You're sweet. And you probably need sleep. Somewhere more comfortable than this too."

"Let's go to bed then." He smiled up at her, slow but sure in the way it crept up upon his mouth. It minimized the groan that came from his ginger rise up.

"Okay, let's."

[Cassidy Finch]

4/23/16

The night air was crisp but the woods surrounding Underbridge Cottage did well to temper it, offering gently wafting breezes scented with Spring in bloom through windows thrown open by the little bird perched in the armchair by a hearth lacking crackle. Much like a cat curled up within a wedge of sunshine, Cassie had knotted herself into a tangle of pretzeled legs and tucked arms protectively cradling the latest subject of her study. The broad, heavy tome was wrapped in supple leather, its cover worn smooth around thick parchment styled paper that had been printed not in more modern fashions but rather by hand. The elegant scrawl was difficult to read and often lead to squinting at pages held up close to her face. It had been easy for her to get lost in it for hours at a time, diving into the text at a much slower pace than her speed reading skills should have otherwise dictated. But as the hour stretched late into the evening and the natural light dwindled, her keeper lit candles around her that smelled of springtime rain and clean linen. They were more than enough to lull her into a comfortable doze until finally she relaxed so much that the old book fell from her lap with a heavy thud, forcing her to jerk upright, doe eyes going wide as she blinked awake.

"Huh... uhhhhhhhhhh," she stifled a yawn as she leaned to retrieve the fallen tome, smoothing crease in the page that had been the casualty of the short distance from her lap to the floor. "Chris? Do you believe in magic? Real magic. Not metaphysics."

Tralle had long since learned to be judicious in disturbing the pretty little brunette when she chose to lose herself within pages of her precious books. There was no pulling her away when she delved in deep enough and even sweet words and soft kisses were hard pressed to draw her attention back to him. It was a humbling experience, one that had brought a much needed balance to their burgeoning relationship, and offered the oft irritable young man a little more perspective. It surprised him that she never teased him when he watched her at her favored pasttime, which he found he could do for hours on end. It made him think, made him reminisce, forcing the wheels in his head to turn and wander back to who he used to be. His aspirations, his hobbies.

It was a lot to consider.

Those very thoughts had deeply engrossed him that night until Cassie stole his attention back, his eyes an unfocused medium blue until the sound of her voice had them seeking her honeyed amber. The question made him frown. "Magic is real. It's all around us. Why?"

"Science says otherwise. Science says that the things that most consider to be magic are otherwise explained by a higher level of physics than most people are capable of comprehending let alone capable of practicing." Since the book wasn't hers, she stuck the bookmark in between the pages rather than dog-earring it before shutting it and leaving it to sit on her knees. Her eyes hurt from deciphering the handwriting but still she sought him out until their gaze met. He frowned, she tried not to mirror it.

"But I overheard someone at Wendenheim's talking about non-magically inclined sorts learning how to use magic. And this," she drummed her fingers against the book, "makes me think that maybe it could possibly, hypothetically be more than just science."

"Then how do you explain the Faceless? Men of wicker and dead plants that move. Or how you got to Rhy'din? Or how they get the cream filling in a Twinkie. All magic." There was a gentle crook of his finger when he finally had the full weight of her attention, beckoning her over to the old sofa he sat upon. It had been a lazy day for the pair of them, a day of sandwiches, iced tea, and heavy reading (and heavier looks). "I was once told there's wizardry and sorcery. One is learned through experimentation and study, the other natural and honed over time."

Cassie visibly winced, averting her gaze while she worked the inside of her cheek between her molars, grinding until she tasted blood on the edge of her tongue. With reverent caution, she picked up the book and set it upon the chair's arm, balancing it there as she got to her feet. Feet clad in white knees socks topped with blue stripes around the top slid against the floor with each step like she was skating. It shuffled her enough across the rug too so that when she reached him, she extended a finger toward his shoulder for a sharp zap of static electricity. She jumped again, giggling as she let herself collapse into a boneless sprawl of Cassidy in all of her denim shorts and t-shirted glory.

"The opposite way from how you get the frosting on a toaster strudel." She answered with a sage nod, squirming until she found one of the handful of comfortable spots on the couch. "Okay, so which is which and how do you go about experimentating and studying?"

She jumped and so did he, loosing a surprised growl that was quickly reduced to a rare Chris-like chuckle. His head tipped to one side to glance up at her, the look following her descent before he sought to satisfy a whim and pulled her half into his lap to press his nose against her delicate cheek.

"I don't know," he confessed quietly against her cheek. "Never thought much about it. I'm not smart enough for that stuff."

Tugged halfway across his lap in a situation far less reminiscent of her birthday and more so toward their more tender moments, she still had to wiggle and squirm until she found just the right spot. Against the press of his nose, the apple of her cheek rounded with the force of the smile on her lips. She turned her head to feather a chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth. "Sure you are. I think you can do and be whatever you want. And I think I'm gonna read into this more. So there's that."

"I did good in school." Tralle shrugged, mustering up a small smile for the sweetness of her lips on his. "But I was a much better athlete than student. I was gonna play baseball for the University of Maryland. If this were D&D, you'd be the mage, I'd be the barbarian or warrior."

Someone was having a nerd moment.

The angling of her chin dragged the tip of her nose down the side of his mouth until she reached the point where his jaw blended into the curve of his chin. "You were going to voluntarily be a Terp? Though I guess they evidently got good over the past couple of years. I dunno, I don't really pay attention to that."

Her giggles had to be muffled against the crook of his neck, pulling her up until she was sitting sideways in his lap fully. "I like to think that I'd be a rogue but I'd probably be the cleric instead. But those aren't badass. You? You're totally badass." A beat. "Even if you're a nerd."

"I can bite you, you know. Big mean beast fangs and everything." There was a growling rumble as the Beast stirred, but it was lost beneath the sweetness of her touch and pretty soon Tralle was slipping his arms around her waist and hugging her tightly to him. He was silent for the passing ticks of a few moments before talking again. "Do you... wanna? Learn magic."

"You wouldn't. Because who would make you pie and inconvenience you at every turn as well as I do?" She teased him with a coy smile and a peek of amber eyes. The parting of her lips came with a graze of her teeth against the shirt covering his shoulder like she might be the one to do the biting. Quiet was something she did well though, so she basked in it and his warmth until he spoke again. Considerate in the contemplation, she hemmed and hawed before bobbing a gentle shrug. "I dunno. I like learning. And... and... I'm..."

Words were hard. She lost them midway and buried her face again in a wash of melancholy. Her shoulders tensed another shrug.

"You inconvenience me very well." The confession came with a rare grin for her peek and the nuzzling tilt of his nose against hers that led to a soft kiss. The gentle pass of his hand stroked along her back repeatedly, a gesture full of affection that and then reassurance when things turned tense. The sadness was almost palpable. "Tell me what you're feeling, Cassie. I'm here..."

She was quiet, holding her breath to keep from letting free the spill of tears that were threatening to run over. Rationalizing that she didn't want to cry on his shirt, she held the air in her lungs until they began to burn and her head swam. Then and only then did she release it in a slow, shaky exhale that brushed hot air against his neck with the turn of her head. "I'm... here. And not there... I know I can't go back, you've said so enough times, I get it. I just... I'm acutely aware of everything I'm missing and all I can wonder is if they miss me too. Or if they even know I'm gone."

It didn't take much more than that to land her square in Tralle's lap, one insistent arm hauling her up and over the last short bit of distance to make a throne for her atop his thighs. The rise of a hand saw a combing of his fingers through her hair and the slow drag of the tips along her neck. When he squeezed her again, it silently told her it was okay to let go and cry. "I... don't have those answers. I don't know them... I just know that I'd know if you were gone. That I'd miss you. That I don't know if I'd ever happy again if you were gone."

For all of the subtle spine that the girl had shown, it didn't take much to make her cry and she loosed quiet tears against the safety of his shoulder, the soft sounds not even making it to the open windows of the cottage. At first it seemed his words were lost on her, in one ear and out the other, but she heard everything. Cassie gave herself exactly three minutes to cry it out, stopping only when her chest hurt. Then and only then did she let herself wither, sniffling as she leaned back to drag the back of her hand across her eyes. The white around honey hues was shot through with red but she tipped back enough to meet his gaze if he offered it. "You would?"

He remained quiet through it all, doing as little as possible to draw attention to himself as she had her moment and worked herself through it, his fingers along her spine a subtle reminder that he was there. The unpleasant curl of his frown was lost against the mess of her dark hair, smothered there where she couldn't see his own sadness at her pain. When she finally sought his attention again, a meeting of blue to amber, the frown tilted back into a slow, tentative smile. "I would miss you so much it hurts. More than any other pain."

She sniffed again, passing her fingertips beneath her eyes to catch the slow bleed of eyeliner that threatened to smudge her pale skin to the point of raccoon-ness. And that wouldn't do, now would it? Studying him for a few extended moments, her head tipped to one side and her lips parted like she had something to say. Words were hard though, as evidenced by her earlier inability to summon them to her needs and so she leaned in to gift him a short, soft kiss and a touch of her brow to his. "That's sweet of you to say. More than stepping on a lego with bare feet?"

"Ten times worst, at least." The smile widened a little, the kiss taken and then returned with another. His free hand rose to feather a light caress to her cheek and jaw. "You make all the anger and pain go away."

"I dunno... steppin' on a lego is pretty bad..." There was the tiniest hint of tease in her tone, the first tremble of a tentative smile finding its way back onto her lips. It strengthened under his touch, a flower under morning's first light. "And you make me brave. I suppose it's a trade, right?"

"You were brave before me, Cassidy Finch." He tipped her chin up slowly, staring down into her red eyes, unflinching and refusing argument. A quick, gentle kiss to her chin was given. "Maybe I just bring out the best of it in you."

"I dunno about that but you do bring out the good," she assured him with a nod that only minorly bobbed against the tip of his fingers to her chin. For a few moments she went quiet before canting her head the opposite direction. "So... are we a thing then? Or what is this?"

"You're my girl," Tralle declared suddenly and immediately became bashful. "Or, uh... will y-you be my g-girlfriend? Or, uh, yeah. That. I'll try to yell less if y-you say yes."

Cassie giggled, not at him or his embarrassment but rather at the irony of him being the one tripping over his words when it was usually her place.

"I dunnooooooo," she trilled, putting on quite the convincing show of hesitation. Her smile quickly overtook it though and she leaned in to brush a careful kiss against his mouth. "Yes. I'll be your girl. Or your girlfriend. But only if you tell me something?"

"Mmmm." He rumbled for that, pressing his torso to hers again and squeezing her tight, that careful kiss of hers deepened for a moment before he was mumbling into the soft, sweetness of her lips. "Mm, what? I, uh, yeah. Sure."

Her intentions were suspect at best as to whether she meant to tease her tongue along the curve of his bottom lip but soon she pursed her lips against his for a soft peck and then a nip at his mouth. Without drawing back, she squirmed against his lap and pulled one knee to each side of his legs. "If I'm gonna stay here with you, I think it's only fair," she murmured, interrupting herself for another gentle kiss before continuing, "to tell me about this place, you know?"

She was going somewhere with it. Slowly but surely.

Forced back against the couch as she shifted, Tralle slipped his hands over her middle, teasing fingertips beneath the hem of her shirt while their mouths touched and she worked the magic of her words on him. He was momentarily distracted by the haze of her touch, of the close proximity and her kisses, pliable beneath the weight of her gentle cajoling.

"You're... not wrong. Should maybe tell you some things..."

"Because I wanna stay here," she mumbled between the caresses of wandering hands, trying not to distract herself as well in the course of lulling the beast into something more forthcoming. "Stay here with you, you know?"

There was that distraction thing, she was quickly forgetting where she was going with it. A soft graze of her teeth on his bottom lip reminded her for some reason or other and she hummed a little note against his mouth. "Things like... who lives in the manor?"

"Stay with me," he echoed softly as she sucked him in further with the cloying taste of her mouth, the warmth of her body against his. "I want that..."

She was intoxicating. The question? That was sobering. It tempered the smile he had plastered against the sweetness of her mouth, becoming a mild frown. "It belongs to the Piper... but he doesn't live there."

"Mmhmmmm. I do too..." She agreed, her fingers weaving an uneven path down his chest until she touched just above his belt. The way she wiggled just the tips between the material of his pants and shirt left her brushing gently across his skin, side to side grazing even as she felt the corners of his mouth drop. A soft shake of her head followed. "No, no. Who lives there. Right now. I heard them but I didn't see them..."

Her mouth was moving but not as much as her hands, her fingers curling against the hemline of his shirt in a half assed attempt to draw it upward.

"Just the servants." It was an honest answer, though not entirely forthcoming. "They keep it clean and organized for the Piper. Stay out of sight. Very stealthy. They, uh, blend in."

He made another quiet sound into her mouth, something like approval, his own hands finding hers and threading the fingers through.

"They're the ones that told me to run... from those things..." Lapping up the soft sounds he made, she tried to ply more out of him by drawing his shirt up until she could pull it off. With his chest bare, she traced her fingernails down his pectorals and continued down toward his beltline again. "Said somethin' else too, but I dunno what it meant. Somethin' about seeing the røv on me... I dunno." More mumbling, more distracting teasing of her hands like she might undo his pants.

"Røv... røv..." Then he coughed and choked on a laugh, his broader frame squirming beneath the feathered touches of her fingertips. "Ass. The ass on you. You do have a beautiful backside, Cassie..." For emphasis, he slipped both hands back around her slender frame and took up two healthy handfuls of her rear, squeezing it. "Fits so good in my hands. Next time tell them it's mine?"

"Ughhhhhhhhhhhh."

[Cassidy Finch]

5/30/16

Dark was descending upon the Row. Though at a later hour than usual thanks to the stretching days of approaching summer, the shadows were content to spread and settle from the corners that seldom saw light until they cloaked the Row as a whole. Amidst them, marine blue Chuck Taylor All Stars beat a frantic pace against pavement and cobblestone both as Cassie raced through dwindling crowds and narrows alleys alike in her journey back to Underbridge Cottage. She couldn't remember the last time she ran so hard. The wind whipped her dark hair into a wild frenzy, tangling and knotting as it flew behind her like a brunette banner. Nearly overshooting her last turn, she went skidding, twisting a hand around a lightpole to facilitate the tight turn. As soon as she made it around the corner, she was right back at it, sprinting the final length until she put the brakes on just shy of the iron gates that shut the manor's grounds away from the rest of the world. Slipping between a narrow gap, she gulped air for exactly two seconds then took off, dashing through the little forest surrounding the caretaker's cottage until she reached the front door. This time around she couldn't slow her momentum quickly enough and ran right into the door. It rattled a groan of protest in its frame but otherwise remained fully intact. The collision sapped the air from her lungs and with far less exuberance, she threw the door open and stumbled inside, slamming it shut behind her.

"Chrissss," she panted his name, bending at the waist to put her hands on her knees. Running was not her thing. Heck, half the time walking wasn't her thing. And, it seemed, talking was also not her thing, not so long as she couldn't breathe.

It had taken some doing (and a great many conversations) for Tralle to finally display even the remotest comfort with the little dark-haired beauty making regular forays from the little place she'd come to nominally see as home. Many discussions, some batted eyelashes and sweet kisses, and one night of less than innocent playfulness had finally sealed the deal before his growling protests gave way to a consent laced with words of potential worry. Taming the Beast had seemed to present a whole new bevy of concerns.

But the trust was there. He trusted the Little Bird even if he didn't trust the rest of the realm. And woe to the ones who thought that...

Somethings were best not to think on.

His day had been spent beneath the sun, muscles taut and his back bent beneath any number of things that had required his attention outside the cottage. The little building had taken a beating in a recent storm and the required repairs left him sweaty and only mildly ill-tempered. He was shirtless at the kitchen sink when Cassie came bursting in, his head whipping around and the distraction nearly making him lose his grip on the glass of water in his hand. "What? What's wrong?"

A certain shirtless keeper only served to extend her breathless inability to answer, her gaze tracing over an increasingly familiar frame before reaching the ever changing shades of blue that looked back at her. Cassie swallowed, holding up a single finger to let him know that she'd answer in just a moment. Save for bright red cheeks and the short, shallow breaths, there didn't seem to be a single thing wrong with her. After a few minutes of silence accented by heavy breathing, she straightened up, bringing her hands up on top of her head.

"I..."

Pant.

Pant.

Smile.

"I... got..."

Huff.

"A job."

Blue eyes widened.

In that moment, Tralle wasn't certain if he should be outraged or excited for the pretty little slip of a bookworm. So, for a few moments, he just stared. The angry gerbil that turned the wheels of his mind just... pooped out. "I... uh..."

Cassie was quite clearly excited. She bounced on her toes, turning to lock the door behind her. With it secure, she stepped away and crossed the scant distance to the little cottage's even littler kitchen. There she slipped the glass from his hand to steal a drink before replacing it within his grasp. Then she offered him another smile and furthered her explanation.

"Yeah, some place called the Iron Collar."

Wait for it. How she managed a straight face was impossible to say but she was certain she was about to kill the cogs in his head for good.

"..." Tralle's jaw dropped.

"...what?"

"Just kidding!" She threw her hands up in front of her, trying not to giggle. The bouncing reconvened again, bobbing up and down on her toes. "Wendenheim said I'm in there enough and he's wanting a little more time to himself, so he offered me a part time spot. Just some evening work, a couple days a week. But it's money, you know?"

"I... uh... wuh." It took him a few moments longer for all of it to register before Cassie's excitement finally infected him and his rigid posture softened beneath a better explanation. She bounced and he was reaching for her hands, seeking the solace of their warm. Touching her helped produce a smile soon after. "That's.. that's good. You've been bored, I know."

Her hands were hot from the run back to the cottage but she curled them into his grip and bobbed up high enough to peck a kiss to his cheek. Tugging on the grip between them, she pulled herself into his shirtless proximity and beamed a bright grin up at him. "Honestly, it felt weird not having a job. I mean, I've had various jobs since I was, like, fifteen. I thought... I thought maybe it might help. Um, is that okay? I didn't even... crap... I didn't even think about it when he offered. Should I have said no?"

She kissed his cheek, but when she finally wriggled her way closer, his mouth found hers for a more proper kiss. He made a quiet, feral sound of pleasure against her lips for it but eventually shook his head when she began to worry.

"I... I guess if I had my way, I'd keep you here... all to myself. But having your own money must be nice. And you sound so excited. You should take the job."

"Are you sure?" She asked softly. Rocking back on her heels, she raked her teeth over her bottom lip. "I just kinda... wanted to help carry my own weight. I mean, um, I'm not quite pretty enough to be a trophy... uh... girlfriend. Or whatever. And having a second person here can't, um, be like, I don't know. Easy? I guess. I just wanted to help..."

"I used to have a lot trophies," he confided in her quietly. It was a fresh glimpse behind the curtain of his mystery. "Baseball. Football. Wrestling. You put trophies on a shelf. You show them off, brag about them. Trophies down kiss away the dark thoughts in front of a fireplace. They don't make you pies or make you dance in the rain. They make you feel superior but they don't make you feel human. No, Cassie. You're not a trophy. You're a hundred times more special. And prettier."

"Well... they could help kiss away things... if you're in to inanimate objects and the one doing the kissin'..." Cassie pointed out quietly. Her fingers wiggled in his grasp, tightening and curving around his hands to draw him out of the kitchen. Her heartbeat was finally returning to normal enough that his words still had the ability to make it skip a beat or two. "And you. You're sweet. Come curl up with me and tell me what you've been up to and I can babble incessantly about my day. 'Kay?"

" 'Kay." Suitably pulled, he trudged across the short distance to the couch, pausing only as long as it took to kick out of his shoes before dropping heavily onto the old piece of furniture. Cassie was pulled down atop him a moment later with one arm draped possessively over her slender frame, loose enough for her to reposition herself however it pleased her. "Fixed some of those bad shingles on the room and resealed around the window you like to sit at. Started considering adding on to the place or something. Maybe someday."

He was agreeable and that made her happy. It wasn't always that way. As he sat, she let herself fall down over him, sprawled half across his lap and half over the couch, her legs kicked up on its arm. The angle gave her a familiar view of his face from beneath and only a little wiggling had her comfortable enough to settle. "Yesssss, I won't get wet anymore!"

It took her a few seconds to realize how that came out. In that time, the flush returned to her face and she giggled quietly before tacking on an addendum. "From the rain coming through the cracks, that is. But, um, adding on huh? Why for?"

"Roll over onto your stomach. We'll fix that." A small, salacious smile passed over his mouth, there and gone, before one hand dragged fingers through her dark hair. He relaxed slowly into the cushions of the couch and her company. "Place isn't very big. Didn't matter much when it was just me but... thought you might like more room. Places for your books. And a desk."

"Oh, you're baaaaaad." Cassie giggled, turning her head against his stomach to bury her face for a few moments. Before she turned back, she made sure to graze her teeth against the taut plane of his abdomen as if it would offer some sliver of reproach from the girl. Her goofy grin sobered slightly, muting itself into something softer but still easily read. It was a reminder that she was there to stay in Rhydin, likely for the long term. "It's cozy. In a good way. But I know all these books are probably annoying... especially if I'm gonna be working at Wendenheim's, I'll probably bring home more..."

Home. It was home. She took a quiet breath, her train of thought derailed for a moment. "Maybe it'll give you something to do. Someday."

"I like the idea of building something." Since all I do here is destroy. Tralle left those words unspoken. Instead, he concentrated on the enjoyment of the moment, revelling in her laughter and the possibility of his proposal. "You'll have to bring me books on building and carpentry and stuff. Maybe read them with me."

"I totally thought about majoring in architecture for like... three seconds. But then I realized that I'm terrible at it and just like looking at pretty buildings. And it'd cost me a whole extra year, so I stuck with the course." Her rambling found her fingers climbing up his stomach and reaching up along his chest until she could graze a fond caress along his jaw before letting her fingers slide back down. "I can do that. Gonna pay me to do your homework on 'em too?"

Her grin was cheekier than cheeky to say the least.

Her cheek was met with the wider tug of his smile, both arms curling around her slender waist to haul her up a little higher. His nose touched hers, then his lips, words teasing in the exhale of breath. "I could find ways to be grateful for the help."

Cassie hummed a contented note with the lift, wriggling just enough in his grasp to settle comfortably without upsetting his hold. A side to side shift of her head grazed her mouth along his, somewhere between intentionally tantalizing and innocently teasing. "I was just kidding. The jocks back in high school used to pay me to write their papers for them. Yaaaay photographic memory."

"Now you've got your very own jock," he murmured and nipped at her bottom lip. His eyes were a deep, light blue, as they often were when he was wrapped up with her just so. "When do you start?"

"Lucky me, right?" She grinned, crinkling her nose and setting her squirming anew. Lifted up as she was, it made it easy for her to snake her hands around the back of his neck, furthering the tangle of their bodies. "Next Monday. I'll train on afternoons with the old man and after a couple weeks I'll get to fly solo on closing shifts. Nothing major, really. Just have to mind the shop, run the till, and lock up before I leave. Don't even have to handle the deposit or anything like that. Which is totally weird for me, ya know? I got so used to it at Ivanna Cone that it was just second nature to count everything out and take it to the bank. But I guess he keeps everything on site. The joys of a locally owned place, I suppose. He isn't going to be paying me all that much but considering there's no taxes or anything being taken out, pair that with the discount I get on books and it might as well be even more."

Cassie paused to breathe. Midway through the inhale, her eyes went wide. "Oh. I'm rambling. Um. Sorry."

"I like it when you ramble. You smile a lot when you do it and I love your smile." It wasn't always like Tralle to be squishy and mushy, but the man had his moments. Like that one. One hand stroked her side as she talked and stopped to settle of the swell of her hip when she began apologizing. "Definitely gonna have to make a space for bookshelves and a desk. Maybe a real reading nook or something. Maybe a real bedroom at some point. A bigger, more comfortable bed?"

He had a way of soothing her anxiety that she couldn't quite explain. Despite her inability to put words to it, she was still quite grateful for it and rewarded him with one of the smiles that he so enjoyed. It wasn't necessarily the big, excited grin that she wore when she spoke but rather something softer, more demure and private, intended for moments just like that one where he said all the right words and got her stomach fluttering with girlish giddiness. "I dunno. I always had to share my spaces so I'm not too sure what I'd do with all of that space. What, ya gettin' tired of the bachelor pad feel?"

"This? A bachelor pad?" He snorted but couldn't hide the grin. "I never thought it exuded much in the way or machismo or romance. It was just a place I slept. And brooded. But if you're looking for the romance, I think I have a tent I could set up over here on the floor and..."

"Bachelor pads don't have to be romantic or macho to be bachelor-y. It just has to be a space best suited for a single male living alone. Like a loft you have to climb up to and a kitchen that isn't quite big enough to be a kitchen and..." Cassie choked on her words, her air, and likely her saliva all at once as his implications finally registered. Coughing through a laugh, she smothered a hand over his face and gave him a half-hearted push. "Shhhhhhhh, oh my gosh! So bad. So so so bad."

"But you like it." It was confident, for a moment. A small wave of insecurity washed over him before... "...right?"

That was more than enough to make her blink in disbelief. Tipping her head to one side, she tried to get a read of his expression and, not liking what she was finding, she used his shoulders to pull herself upright in his lap. Shifting one leg to either side of him, she made a face when her left knee sank down into the gap between cushions while the right remained level. The wriggle to get settled was wholly unintentional but completely necessary. Petite hands slid up to cup his face and after a moment of thought, she leaned in to gift him a softly persuasive kiss and then a second and a third before leaning back just enough to bump her forehead against his.

"Love it. And you."

Whatever confessions of love he might have returned to the petite brunette, they were lost in the warmth of her lips. She might have been done, but Christopher Tralle wasn't. He kissed her again, long and deep and as unhurried as it was urgent. It was a lover's kiss, the prelude to sweeter things, compounded by the tease of fingers beneath the hem of her shirt against bare skin. When they were finally forced to come up for air, he stayed close, clarifying his earlier declaration.

"I love you."

Cassidy issued exactly zero complaints when he was intent on stealing her breath away with a longer than intended meeting of mouths. The heels of her hands slid up his body only for her to rake her nails downward on the next pass. It left her fingers to curl at the top of his pants, only inches away from where his own hands toyed and teased. "Ditto."

"We gotta celebrate, right?"

"We do," he agreed against her mouth, not wanting to pull away. "You deserve to celebrate. What do you wanna do? Dinner? Movie? Whatever you want, Cassie. I will try to make it so."

A slight tick of tension at his waistband was soon relieved with the quiet pop of a button undone.

An answer to his question? Maybe. She grinned against his lips and pinched one shoulder upward in a lazy shrug. "I just wanna hang with you. And maybe sometime this week we can stop by that bakery with the cupcakes."

"Mmm, oh." Tralle was so damned suave. "Well, here I am..."

[Cassidy Finch]

10/3/16

For all the beauty of spring and the warmth of summer, nothing quite compared to autumn. And fall in Rhydin was nothing short of splendid, at least in Cassie's opinion. It meant she could keep the bookstore's windows and doors open so the musty book smell could be fluffed by the crisp air rolling through the aisles. It put her in a chipper mood on the way back to Underbridge Cottage and that mood was only built upon further by the crunch underfoot of leaves set aflame by their last days. It meant that she could break out her knee socks again without feeling silly or getting too hot. Summer in Rhydin was quite like sitting in a pot of boiling water. Fall was much better.

Knee socks. Crunchy leaves. Crisp air. Pumpkin spice everything. She couldn't even. With a satchel full of new books to read, she turned the last corner before Underbridge and strolled her way along the high iron topped wall that surrounded the manor's grounds. She kicked through a gathering of dead leaves at the gate and happily pushed through. Bending briefly to tug at her sock, her other hand kept the hem of her pleated skirt from rising on the opposite side with the motion. With that fixed, she stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets and made the last jaunt to the cottage's front door.

One would think that being the ornery, savage supernatural thug to an the master of the underbelly of a pocket dimension would be overly demanding on a man's time. In reality, Tralle wasn't often forced into anything beyond maintaining his vigil over the grounds of Underbridge Manor and whatever secrets it harbored. A mystic tether to a site and a lack of anything better to do was enough to lend some understanding to the oft terse and growly young man. That was until he had willingly let someone occupy that space with him. Someone special.

On a day like this in years past he would have spent the time in sullen, stoic thought or perhaps people watching in some place he didn't belong. Since the spring? Well, Tralle had other things to take up his time. It had taken very little coaxing to convince him that some more on the cottage might not be out of order and what had become a small idea had slowly expanded into him whiling away his hours putting an entire addition on their quaint little home. While Cassie wandered through the book laden paradise of her job, he had spent the hours sweating out his frustration and creativity on the cottage. He was still at it when she slipped through the gate in her approach to what had become their little (but growing home), stripped to the waist moving big sheets plywood in an attempt to put a cap on an otherwise productive day.

As she cut down the winding path that split off from the main one to the manor, she shuffled to a stop amidst the treeline so she could watch him. It had been a strange eight months but when it was all said and done, she was glad to have gone through it with him. After a few minutes of watching him work, she stepped back into motion, drawing her fingers to her lips to shrilly whistle at him. Cassie adjusted the strap on her satchel and came to a stop out of his way and just off the cobbles that lined the front walk to the door.

"Isn't it getting a little cold to be showing off shirtless like that?"

"My body runs naturally hot." It had never come up as a topic of conversation before now but, in retrospect, there were a number of moments where it would have been plainly obvious. Thought not entirely explainable. "Sweatin' through it and then getting cold would only make it worse."

The last board was shoved into place beneath the recently shingled roof and Tralle finally turned to regard her while tugging the heavy work gloves free from his hands. Long, lazy strides ate up the distance between them and when he finally stopped, it was to loom over her like some overgrown grumpy menace. Nevermind the small smile he fought off at the sight of her.

"Yeah it does." She answered with a bob of her brows before promptly bursting into a fit of giggles. Stifling them with a lick of her lips, she tried to also repress the grin that threatened to overtake her mouth as he neared. His looming never bothered her anymore. In fact it was an odd sort of comfort to bask in his shadow. When he was close enough, she lifted onto her tip toes, hooked a finger into the top of his pants and tugged him forward another step so she could give him a kiss. Short and sweet.

Kinda like the little bird herself. Just like that she let him go, spun a circle that flared her skirt, and started for the front door. "It's lookin' good. Also, Al'rutanian's corner shop put out these amazing looking spiced apples. So... I'm gonna make a pie. Or I'll end up eating them all first and pie'll just have to wait. Either way!"

A quiet, feral sound of approval vibrated against the sweet softness of her lips and had him leaning in an attempt to draw this kiss out. A plaintive sound escaped when she drew away but as she retreated and flashed a little too much thigh, he was whipping the heavy gloves to crack heavily against her pert backside.

"Do you want me to take you there?" The question was far less possessive that it might have been months before. He had gotten used to the idea of her going out on her own, if only when it was necessary. But he also liked taking the time with her, being close to her as much in public as in private. Tralle followed after her into the house, needy hands feathering her with little touches as they went. "Or did you already get them?"

A sharp but playful yelp issued when the flat of the gloves thwacked her bum with a snap of his wrist, silencing the birds in the thinning trees if only for a few moments. She laughed and swatted a hand at him before dropping a hand to drum out a little beat against a rounded hump in her bag. The tap of fingernails tipped in chipped black lacquer rattled glass underneath then went quiet as she caught the door handle and bumped it open to let them both in.

"Already got 'em on the way home." Home. Home. Such an odd feeling word in her mouth. But plain as day, the four walls that surrounded her as she crossed the threshold was, in fact, home now. "They had cherries too. You know, in the goopy sauce juice? Mm-mmmph. But I passed 'em up for apples instead."

"So no getting to eat your cherry then?" Long fingers smoothed over her hips and squeezed gently before he peeled away from her, pausing to close the door behind them and rub at the sides of his neck. Broad shoulders were rolled in a stretch, his back arching.

"Isn't that a one and done sort of thing?" Cassie giggled as she tossed him a cheeky grin. Stepping into the kitchen, she dug through her bag and collected the mason jar full of saucy spiced apple slices. They'd likely never survive to make it into the pie, but hey, nobody needed to know. With that stored away, she hauled the strap off her shoulder and went to drop her bag on the cubby-hole like daybed that had once been hers, but now mostly served as a reading spot when she felt like curling up with a good book. Once her hands were free, she turned back to him. "So how's the addition looking?"

"Nothin' wrong with pretendin'." Eventually he ended up in the small kitchen beside her, pausing long enough to grab a hard cider from the refrigerator and take a long sip before slouching into a lean against the counter. "Not as fast as I'd like but I think I can have the walls up and insulated before the first frost. The inside work I can keep after while it's getting colder. In-walls bookshelves."

He added the last with a small smile.

She listened intently as she always did but the perk up was undeniable with his addendum. It took only a fraction of a second for her to cross back to him and even less than that to fling her arms around his bare neck for the most delighted of hugs. "You mean it? Really? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd be thrilled. I just figured you'd wanna use the space for something else or something. I don't know, don't listen to me. Shelves are great. I love shelves!"

Tralle almost dropped the bottle in the moment, barely managing to set it aside before he slung his arms low around her hips. She was squeezed tightly, his neck craning down so he could stare into her eyes. "Yeah. I wanna use the space for whatever makes you happy. Maybe a big bedroom with a ready reading nook. We can read together."

Had he dropped it, it would've just been a good excuse to see her on her hands and knees while she cleaned it up. A shame he held on. Her gaze was bright even in the waning light of day that trickled through the canopy that surrounded the cottage and through the old windowpanes. "Soooo, no more climbing a ladder to go to bed?"

She was turned around slowly in his arms until her back was settled comfortably against his chest, one arm still around her middle while the other stroked along her cheek. "No more climbing a ladder to go to bed," he promised her with a gentle kiss to the shell of her ear. "We'll just have to use it for other things."

It was a comfortable and not uncommon lean that she took up against him, a smile curving her mouth as her eyes closed. Already she was picturing the addition and the bedroom and the shelves. It was perfect. So perfect. Tipping her head slightly when his mouth touched her ear, she shivered a little and fought off another giggle. "Other things like what?"

"Doing sexy things to you when you try to climb it." His nose traced the line of her jaw until a light kiss dusted her neck and was then drawn back up. "After all, apple isn't my favorite pie."

One of his hand slipped along hers to thread their fingers together, more soft kisses raining down along her cheek and ear sweetly.

The heat that flushed her cheeks rose quickly. Even after half a year with him she still hadn't built an immunity to the sort of reaction he caused in her. That included the delectable little squirm she gave him, wriggling in his grasp as her hand tightened in his. "My cherry pie is."

"It's the sweetest. Tastes like love." Who knew Tralle could talk so sweet? The fingers of his free hand caught her gently by the chin, gliding beneath it to tip it up. His lips touched gently upon hers and then worked a slow path down to her throat where he bit oh-so-gently.

Her teeth had caught the corner of her bottom lip but the pressure was quickly relieved when he kissed her. Instead she turned her focus to to worrying at his bottom lip for the brief moment he gave it to her before he continued on down her neck. The nip sent another shiver down her spine and she squirmed once more, giggling. "I'm not sure what to say to that except maybe you can have dessert after we've eaten for real? Or maybe after I've had a shower. Or both. Either way."

Both. It definitely ended up being both.